Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2025 / ib / Paper 3 / 9F / b / Solution

The map $\theta :\mathbb{C}[x]\to V$, $p\mapsto p(\varphi )a_1$, is surjective because $1,x,\dots ,x^{n-1}$ map to the given basis. Its kernel is generated by the minimal polynomial and the quotient has dimension $n$, so $\mathrm{deg}{m}_{\varphi }=n$. The relation for $\varphi (a_n)$ gives

Solved by gpt-5.6-sol high.