Monthly Archives: January 2019

January 8, 2019 · 12:51 am

An exceptional isomorphism

We will construct the exceptional isomorphism S_6\cong Sp_4(\mathbb{F}_2).

The group S_6 acts on \mathbb{F}_2^6 preserving the usual pairing \langle e_i,e_j\rangle=\delta_{ij} where the e_i are the usual basis vectors.

There is an invariant line L, the span of \sum_i e_i and an invariant hyperplane H=\{\sum_i a_ie_i|\sum_i a_i=0\}. Let V=H/L. S_6 acts on V.

Since L is the radical of the pairing \langle \cdot,\cdot\rangle on H, the pairing \langle \cdot,\cdot\rangle descends to a non-degenerate bilinear pairing on V. As it is symmetric and we are in characteristic 2, it is automatically skew-symmetric.

The S_6-action preserves this pairing, hence we get our desired homomorphism from S_6 to Sp_4(\mathbb{F}_2).

To check injectivity, it suffices to show that (12) is not in the kernel, since we know all normal subgroups of S_6. Surjectivity then follows by a counting argument, so we get our desired isomorphism.

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