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JEE Advanced 2022 Paper 2 · Mathematics · Matrices and Determinants · hard

Let mathcal S be the set of all 3×3 matrices A with every entry in \0,1\ such that A^2=I, where I is the identity matrix. The number of elements of…

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Let S\mathcal S be the set of all 3×33\times3 matrices AA with every entry in {0,1}\{0,1\} such that A2=IA^{2}=I, where II is the identity matrix. The number of elements of S\mathcal S is
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Answer: 4

If A2=IA^2=I then AA is invertible, so det⁡A=±1\det A=\pm1 and AA is a 00-11 matrix with A−1=AA^{-1}=A. An invertible 00-11 matrix whose inverse is also a 00-11 matrix must be a permutation matrix, because the product of a row of AA with a column of A−1A^{-1} must produce exact 00 and 11 entries with non-negative terms only, which forces each row and column to contain a single 11. So AA is the permutation matrix of a permutation σ\sigma of three objects with σ2=id\sigma^{2}=\mathrm{id}. Such permutations are the identity and the three transpositions, giving 1+3=41+3=4 matrices. An exhaustive computer enumeration of all 292^9 matrices gives the same count.
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