The Representation Theory of 2-Sylow Subgroups of the Symmetric Group

Abstract

We use binary trees to study the Bratteli diagram of Sylow 2-subgroups of symmetric groups. We show that it is simple, has a recursive structure, and self-similarities at all scales. We contrast its subgraph of one-dimensional representations with the Macdonald tree. We exploit the recursive structure to find the multiplicities of irreducible characters in the restriction to a Sylow 2-subgroup of odd-dimensional representations of the symmetric group $S_{2^k}$.