Group action

In mathematics, a symmetry group is an abstraction used to describe the symmetries of an object. A group action formalizes the relationship between the group and the symmetries of the object. It relates each element of the group to a particular transformation of the object.

In this case, the group is also called a permutation group (especially if the set is finite or not a vector space) or transformation group (especially if the set is a vector space and the group acts like linear transformations of the set). A permutation representation of a group G is a representation of G as a group of permutations of the set (usually if the set is finite), and may be described as a group representation of G by permutation matrices. It is the same as a group action of G on an ordered basis of a vector space.

A group action is an extension to the notion of a symmetry group in which every element of the group "acts" like a bijective transformation (or "symmetry") of some set, without being identified with that transformation. This allows for a more comprehensive description of the symmetries of an object, such as a polyhedron, by allowing the same group to act on several different sets of features, such as the set of vertices, the set of edges and the set of faces of the polyhedron.