Conjugation invariants determine the metacommutation permutation only up to relabelling

2026-08-03Computer Science and Game Theory

Computer Science and Game Theory
AI summary

The authors study a special kind of symmetry (called metacommutation) involving primes in the Hurwitz quaternions, focusing on how certain prime elements rearrange others. Previous work described properties of this rearrangement using only certain simple, conjugation-invariant data. Here, the authors show that these simple data cannot fully describe how the rearrangement works on a detailed level. They illustrate this with a small explicit example, proving that more subtle information beyond conjugation-invariants is needed. The work also discusses structural group actions explaining why no natural labeling of the classes exists.

Hurwitz quaternionsprime elementsmetacommutationconjugation invariantspermutation signcycle structureunit conjugationPGL2 over finite fieldsorbit-stabilizerclass labelling
Authors
Matthew Fried
Abstract
Let $\mathcal{H}$ be the Hurwitz quaternions, $p$ an odd prime, and $Q \in \mathcal{H}$ a prime of norm $q \neq p$. Metacommutation $PQ = Q'P'$ induces a permutation $π_Q$ of the $p+1$ left-associate classes of primes of norm $p$. Cohn and Kumar compute its sign and fixed-point count, and Leite and Machiavelo its full cycle structure, by formulas depending only on conjugation-invariant data of $Q$ (namely $q$ and $\mathrm{tr}\,Q$). We prove this is exactly the boundary of what such invariants can carry: no quantity $I(Q)$ invariant under unit conjugation determines $π_Q$ as a labelled permutation of the intrinsic class set, or even the image of a single specified class. The proof combines an equivariance identity $π_{uQu^{-1}} = ρ_u π_Q ρ_u^{-1}$ with a minimal, fully explicit witness at $(p,q) = (3,5)$: the four primes $2+i$, $2+j$, $2+k$, $2-i$ form a single unit-conjugacy orbit, hence agree under every conjugation-invariant function, yet induce four pairwise distinct $4$-cycles of the same four classes. We further observe that isomorphisms $\mathcal{H}/p\mathcal{H} \to M_2(\mathbb{F}_p)$ form a torsor under $\mathrm{PGL}_2(\mathbb{F}_p)$, so no projective labelling of the classes is canonical, and that by orbit-stabilizer the datum of one destination $π_Q(C)$ is exactly a coset $g_Q G_C$ in $\mathrm{PGL}_2(\mathbb{F}_p)/G_C$. All sixteen refactorizations in the witness are listed in the appendix and have been verified by machine along two independent routes.