[Math] Frobenius reciprocity and induced representations

abstract-algebragroup-theoryrepresentation-theory

In representation theory, we consider the restriction functor for any group $G$ and subgroup $H$. This is:

$Res_H^G : Rep(G) \rightarrow Rep(H)$

This gives a representation of $H$

The Induced case lets us look in the other direction, going from subgroup representations to the groups representation

$Ind_H^G : Rep(H) \rightarrow Rep(G)$

How does this relate to Frobenius Reciprocity?

For example, I have the following question that I would like to be able to solve

Let $G$ be a finite group and $H$ be a subgroup. Let $1_H$ be the trivial representation of $H$. Show that the trivial representation $1_G$ of $G$ occurs exactly once in the induced representation $Ind_H^G1_H$

My instinct would be to assume $1_G$ appears more than once in the induced rep, and arrive at a contradiction. I have not yet been sucessful in this and would very much appreciate your help

Best Answer

Frobenius Reciprocity says that induction and restriction are adjoint functors. If you aren't comfortable with that language, what this means is that if $V$ is a representation of $H$ and $W$ is a representation of $G$ then there is an isomorphism:

$$Hom_G(Ind_H^G (V), W) \cong Hom_H(V, Res^G_H (W)) $$

Really adjunction gives something stronger, a sort of consistent way to choose such an isomorphism for all such pairs $V$ and $W$, but for a lot of purposes this statement is what we really care about.

Applying this to your question, where $V = 1_H$ and $W = 1_G$, we get:

$$Hom_G(Ind_H^G (1_H), 1_G) \cong Hom_H(1_H, Res^G_H (1_G)) $$

The point is that while the left hand side involves a term $Ind_H^G (1_H)$ we don't quite understand, the left hand side is easy since clearly $Res^G_H (1_G) = 1_H$. So this just becomes

$$Hom_G(Ind_H^G (1_H), 1_G) \cong Hom_H(1_H, 1_H) \cong \mathbb{C}$$

So this tells us that $Hom_G(Ind_H^G (1_H), 1_G)$ is one dimensional, which exactly means that there is a single copy of the trivial representation of $G$ in $Ind_H^G (1_H)$, since if there were two copies we could project onto each one and scale them independently giving us a(n at least) two dimensional Hom-space.

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