The orthogonal and the natural representation for symmetric groups

Abstract In the present article, improved algorithms for evaluating the irreducible representations of the symmetric group associated with an arbitrary partition, such as the orthogonal, the natural, and the seminormal representation, are introduced and the relations among them are discussed. With the new algorithms, a representation matrix for the orthogonal or the seminormal representation is expressed as the product of three matrices, where two of them are the triangular intrinsic matrices depending on the irreducible representation of the symmetric group; the other relating to the permutation can be given explicitly. Furthermore, we give a concise description for the irreducible representations of the symmetric group and reach an interesting conclusion that the conjugation transformation matrix between the orthogonal and the natural representation is the intrinsic matrix of the symmetric group. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.