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such that
fixed points of . (Note that this is a function of the group action, not the
group, but again were abusing notation.) Counting the total number of
fixed points vertically, then horizontally, gives the following.
Proposition:
On the other hand, by the orbit-stabilizer theorem, its true for any orbit
that
partition
Now, one example application I mentioned was about painting the faces of
a cube up to rotational symmetry. This is the example used in
the Wikipedia article on Burnsides lemma, so instead of repeating
Wikipedia Ill just add that the group in question is known as
the octahedral group. Its not too hard to list its elements explicitly and
figure out their fixed points.
I would give more examples, but the next big result I want to prove is, in
my opinion, just as easy for the general case as for any of the interesting
examples, so Ill give the examples later. Recall that the general situation
the PET deals with is that, given a set
on which a group
acts, we want
denote
(Once more, this is a function of the group action and not just the group.)
Orbit-counting tells us that to do this it suffices to count the number of
fixed points of a given
fix a function
if and only if
? This is possible
for all
, but after a
),
each cycle can be colored independently of the other cycles. This gives the
following preliminary result which we will generalize to Polyas theorem.
Baby Polya:
In other words,
with
cycles divided by
is the number of
. It is, of course, quite useful
, but
In this example
symmetry group
is a set of size
the balls and colors as the urns. It can be solved with an elementary
counting argument: an arrangement of
symbols,
of
.
Note that this is a polynomial in
of degree
is also equal to
with
in
is the
and
is a finite
set of colors for each of the beads of a necklace. Describing the cycle
decomposition of elements of
is generated by
follows.
is isomorphic to the
such that
. If
more generally,
.
It follows that the number of cycles in the cycle decomposition of
is
beads
and colors is
.
To get a nicer formula, we need to count the solutions
to
which has
.
Setting
Setting
as A000031 in the OEIS. This identity can also be proven via Mobius
inversion, another fascinating area of combinatorics I hope to discuss
someday.
Simple graphs of small order
Here
, the action
, where a
on
, so lets take
group has
2.
3.
cycles.
organize into two cycles, but of different sizes (check this). The remaining four
edges form another cycle, so there are
4.
cycles.
. The three edges connecting
to
cycles.
to
form three cycles. The remaining four edges are all fixed, so there are
6.
cycles.
. The edge
Phew! In total, baby Polya tells us that the number of non-isomorphic (not
necessarily connected) simple graphs on
vertices is
, and you can find the list here. But isnt this computation so much
? This is
Stanley says that there exist explicit formulas describing the cycle
decomposition of the action of
of
generalizes.
Now, by restricting ourselves to a few classes of permutation that we
understand well, we can compute lower bounds on the number of nonisomorphic graphs. For example, taking only the identity gives the trivial
lower bound
transpositions are the equality case. All other permutations induce larger
cycles, so have less of them, which gives the upper bound
.
Unfortunately, the two are rather far apart (far larger than a constant
factor). Even if we attempt the casework going through other nice
conjugacy classes, I believe the gap between the lower and upper bounds
we get remains large. The upper bound gives us much more information
than the lower bound, however; asymptotically, the lower bound reduces
to the trivial lower bound, whereas the upper bound is a factor of
smaller than the trivial upper bound (the number of labeled graphs on
vertices).
Where do we go from here?
The analysis we had to do in the case of simple graphs suggests that we
might not only like to count the number of cycles in a given group action,
but how many cycles there are of each length. It would be useful, in
particular, if we could do this for the symmetric group. Our analysis also
suggests that baby Polya isnt detailed enough: if we want to compute the
number of necklaces is
where
number of necklaces using two colors, but with the additional constraint
that there are exactly
This is a natural enough question, but baby Polya isnt equipped to specify
how many of each color there are.
We can solve this problem by hand, though. There are
labeled
necklaces. Two of these necklaces are in their own orbit: they are the
necklaces consisting of alternating colors. Every other labeled necklace
has trivial stabilizer subgroup (why?), hence is in a full orbit. This gives
a combinatorial proof that
such that
Again, this can be proven by hand (and its easier to consider a smaller
symmetry group to do it), but were going for generality here.
Compute
thealternating group
with
on the representation of
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1 g
|X |
|G| g G
number of permutations
example
identity
(1)(2)(3)(4)
2-cycles
(12)(3)(4)
3-cycles
(123)(4)
4-cycles
(1234)
pair of 2-cycles
(12)(34)
Total
24
number of
permutations
identity
example
(# perm)*(fixed
elements in this perm)
= total fixed elements
of X
(1)(2)(3)(4)
1 * 113400 = 113,400
6 * 12600 = 75,600
2-cycles
(12)(3)(4)
3-cycles
(123)(4)
None of the elements of X are fixed by a 3cycle, because 1,2,3 must have at least two
kinds of cake among them.
4-cycles
(1234)
No fixed elements of X.
pair of 2cycles
Total
24
(12)(34)
3 * 1800 = 5400
194,400
"hyper-binary" partition
Combination identities