The Theory Of Group Characters And Matrix Representations Of Groups

Originally written in 1940, this book remains a classical source on representations and characters of finite and compact groups. The book starts with necessary information about matrices, algebras, and groups. Then the author proceeds to representations of finite groups. Of particular interest in this part of the book are several chapters devoted to representations and characters of symmetric groups and the closely related theory of symmetric polynomials. The concluding chapters present the representation theory of classical compact Lie groups, including a detailed description of representations of the unitary and orthogonal groups. The book, which can be read with minimal prerequisites (an undergraduate algebra course), allows the reader to get a good understanding of beautiful classical results about group representations.

Group representation theory is both elegant and practical, with important applications to quantum mechanics, spectroscopy, crystallography, and other fields in the physical sciences. This book offers an easy-to-follow introduction to the theory of groups and of group characters. Designed as a rapid survey of the subject, it emphasizes examples and applications of the theorems, and avoids many of the longer and more difficult proofs. The text includes sections that provide the mathematical basis for some of the applications of group theory. It also offers numerous exercises, some stressing computation of concrete examples, others stressing development of the theory.

This book provides a modern introduction to the representation theory of finite groups. Now in its second edition, the authors have revised the text and added much new material. The theory is developed in terms of modules, since this is appropriate for more advanced work, but considerable emphasis is placed upon constructing characters. Included here are the character tables of all groups of order less than 32, and all simple groups of order less than 1000. Applications covered include Burnside's paqb theorem, the use of character theory in studying subgroup structure and permutation groups, and how to use representation theory to investigate molecular vibration. Each chapter features a variety of exercises, with full solutions provided at the end of the book. This will be ideal as a course text in representation theory, and in view of the applications, will be of interest to chemists and physicists as well as mathematicians.

Introducing the representation theory of finite groups, this second edition has been revised and updated. The theory is developed in terms of modules with considerable emphasis placed upon constructing characters.

This graduate-level text provides a thorough grounding in the representation theory of finite groups over fields and rings. The book provides a balanced and comprehensive account of the subject, detailing the methods needed to analyze representations that arise in many areas of mathematics. Key topics include the construction and use of character tables, the role of induction and restriction, projective and simple modules for group algebras, indecomposable representations, Brauer characters, and block theory. This classroom-tested text provides motivation through a large number of worked examples, with exercises at the end of each chapter that test the reader's knowledge, provide further examples and practice, and include results not proven in the text. Prerequisites include a graduate course in abstract algebra, and familiarity with the properties of groups, rings, field extensions, and linear algebra.

This volume contains a collection of papers from the Conference on Character Theory of Finite Groups, held at the Universitat de Valencia, Spain, on June 3-5, 2009, in honor of I. Martin Isaacs. The topics include permutation groups, character theory, p-groups, and group rings. The research articles feature new results on large normal abelian subgroups of p-groups, construction of certain wreath products, computing idempotents in group algebras of finite groups, and using dual pairs to study representations of cross characteristic in classical groups. The expository articles present results on vertex subgroups, measuring theorems in permutation groups, the development of super character theory, and open problems in character theory.