Groups and Characters

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.

Preface, 1 Introductory Examples, 2 Groups and Subgroups, 3 Point Groups and Cosets, 4 Homomorphisms and Normal Subgroups, 5 Isomorphisms and Automorphisms, 6 Factor Groups, 7 Sylow Subgroups, 8 Permutation Groups, 9 Matrix Groups, 10 Group Representations, 11 Regular Representations, 12 Irreducible Representations, 13 Representations of Abelian Groups, 14 Group Characters, 15 Orthogonality Relations and Character Tables, 16 Reducible Characters, 17 The Burnside Counting Theorem, 18 Real Characters, 19 Induced Characters, 20 The Character Table for S5, 21 Space Groups and Semidirect Products, 22 Proofs of the Sylow Theorems, Bibliography, Index of Symbols, Index

Victor E Hill