Paper 3, Section II, F
(a) State Mackey's theorem, defining carefully all the terms used in the statement.
(b) Let be a finite group and suppose that acts on the set .
If , we say that the action of on is -transitive if has at least elements and for every pair of -tuples and such that the are distinct elements of and the are distinct elements of , there exists with for every .
(i) Let have at least elements, where and let . Show that acts -transitively on if and only if acts transitively on and the stabiliser acts -transitively on .
(ii) Show that the permutation module can be decomposed as
where is the trivial module and is some -module.
(iii) Assume that , so that . Prove that is irreducible if and only if acts 2-transitively on . In that case show also that is not the trivial representation. [Hint: Pick any orbit of on ; it is isomorphic as a -set to for some subgroup . Consider the induced character