International Journal of Applied Mathematics

Volume 26 No. 1 2013, 1-7

ISSN: 1311-1728 (printed version); ISSN: 1314-8060 (on-line version)
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.12732/ijam.v26i1.1

DIHEDRAL GROUPS OF ORDER 2m+1

Bilal N. Al-Hasanat1 , Othman A. Almatroud2 , Mousa S. Ababneh3
1 Department

of Mathematics
Al Hussein Bin Talal University
Maan, JORDAN
2 Department of Mathematics
Hail University
Hail, 81481, SAUDI ARABIA
3 Department of Finance and Administrative
Irbed University College
BAU (Al-Balga Appl. University), JORDAN

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to determine the structure of the dihedral
groups of order 2m+1 , where m in a natural number greater than 1, and to
describe a lot of properties for these groups.
AMS Subject Classification: 20D15, 20D25
Key Words: dihedral groups, cycle, conjugacy classes

1. Introduction
The dihedral groups play a significant rule in the Group Theory, while the dihedral groups are originally produced from the symmetries of regular polygons,
which together form surfaces and planes.
The study of the theory of groups form a basis to ensure a successful achievement of a higher level. Some important applications with 3-dimensions space
can be described like a lot of symmetries of polygons. Physicists associated
Received:

June 23, 2012

Correspondence

author

c 2013 Academic Publications

B.N. Al-Hasanat, O.A. Almatroud, M.S. Ababneh

with the use of groups based on the simplistic analogies in engineering study
problems related to mechanics and optics, and emphasize that the tools provided by the set theory can help essentially to address some of the most difficult
questions and contemporary research.
Jaume Aguade et al, in [4], gave a new classification of the infinite dihedral
groups, and they showed that a complete classification of all representations
can be described by a system of numerical invariants for the dihedral group
of rank 2. In [1] and [2], Conrad Keith noted that the size of Dn is at most
2n and every rotation in the dihedral group is conjugate to its inverse. In [7]
Miller proved that it is the only dihedral group which does not admit any outer
automorphisms.
We consider this class of dihedral groups of order 2m+1 because of its various
properties, that no other classes of dihedral groups may have it all. Corollary
2 gives as consequence, a collection of properties.

2. Definitions
A dihedral group is a group of rotations and reflections for a regular polygon, the
dihedral group for n-polygon is denoted by D2n , where the order of this group
is the number of rotations and reflections for the vertices of n-polygon, That is
by determining the symmetric axes (which depend on n odd or even), and then
find the reflections and rotations in term of each symmetric axis. The number of
distinct rotations is n which is also the number of distinct reflections, so |D2n | =
2n, this is why we use the notation D2n . In general, let S = {s0 , s1 , , sn1 }
be the set of all reflection symmetries and R = {r0 , r1 , , rn1 } be the set
of all rotational symmetries both are outcomes by permutate the vertices of
n-polygon, then we can give the following definition.
Definition 1. A dihedral group D2n for the regular n-polygon is the
set S R equipped with the composition operation , given by the following
relations:
ri rj = r(i+j) mod n , ri sj = s(i+j) mod n , si rs = s(ij) mod n
and si sj = r(ij) mod n , where the composition of symmetries is also a symmetric. Notice that r0 = e the counter clockwise rotations by 0 is the identity
element.
Example 1. The following is the table of D2(4) , the group of all reflections

DIHEDRAL GROUPS OF ORDER 2m+1

and rotations for 4-polygon:

e
r1
r2
r3
s0
s1
s2
s3

e
e
r1
r2
r3
s0
s1
s2
s3

r1
r1
r2
r3
e
s3
s0
s1
s2

r2
r2
r3
e
r1
s2
s3
s0
s1

r3
r3
e
r1
r2
s1
s2
s3
s0

s0
s0
s1
s2
s3
e
r1
r2
r3

s1
s3
s0
s1
s2
r1
e
r1
r2

s2
s2
s3
s0
s1
r3
r3
e
r1

s3
s1
s2


s3
R S
s0
S R
r2
r2
r3
e

Table 1.

3. Dihedral Group of Order 2m+1

Theorem 1. (see [1]) The size of D2n is at most 2n.
Proof. See [1].
Now we are going to explain the following problem presented in [8], page
45.
Problem. Show that the dihedral group D2n is generated by two elements
a, b such that an = b2 = (ab)2 = e.
Answer. Let n 3, then the rotations set could be determined by rotate the
vertices of regular n-polygon counterclockwise by 2/n each time, so r1 is the
rotation by 2/n, and r2 is the rotating of the result rotation by 2/n, and so on,
until the vertices get back to its first place, and this happen when the composite
rotation process by n-times, that is n (2/n) = 2. So, one can generate all the
rotations in term of the base rotation r = r1 , and then repeat r for any order
0 < i n to get the other rotations. For our aims, let r be the rotation clockwise
of n-polygon by 2/n, then the set of rotations R is {r i | i = 1, 2, 3, , n},
and it can be easily shown that the order of r is n; i.e r n = e, where e is the
rotation by 0 2m , m N. To describe the reflections elements of D2n ,
let us begin with the base reflection s = s0 which is the reflection of n-polygon
about the horizontal axis passing through the center of the polygon, and then
all other reflections can be made by rotate this reflection counter clockwise by

B.N. Al-Hasanat, O.A. Almatroud, M.S. Ababneh

i(2/n) , i = 1, 2, 3, , n 1. By this way, we get n 1 rotations for the

base reflection s, and then n reflections, this gives the set of reflections S to
be S = {s} {r i s | i = 1, 2, 3 , n 1} = {r i s | i = 1, 2, 3, , n}, it
appears that s is not a power of r and so all the other reflections, it is clear
that |s| = 2 and (r k s)2 = e. This gives the following result (We will write rs
instead of r s):
Corollary 1. All the elements of D2n can be written as a composition of
rotations and reflections. So, the minimal number of generators is 2, which of
the form r k for rotations and r k s for the reflections, 0 < k n.
Proof. The proof is straightforward from the previous descriptions of both
r and s.
In another point of view, (r k )1 = r nk , where the composition operation
of r k and r nk should be the identity. To show that every rotation is conjugate
to its inverse; we are first looking for e 6= a D2n where ara1 = r 1 , then a is
a rotation or a reflection, if a is a rotation then a = r k for some integer k < n,
and then r k r(r k )1 = r k+1k = r 6= r 1 , then our only choice of a is a = s as
a reflection. This gives that srs1 = r 1 , in general sr k s1 = (r k )1 = r k ,
using this description we get the following definition:
Definition 2. The dihedral group D2n is the group generated by r and s,
where:
r n = s2 = (r k s)2 = e for k = 1, 2, , n.
So one can write
D
E
D2n = r, s | r n = s2 = (r k s)2 = e, k = 1, 2, , n .
As a direct consequence of all the above, the order of any reflection is 2,
where (r k s)1 = r k s and (r k )1 = r nk .
Let G = D2n , where n = 2m , and m is a natural number
m3
X
greater than 1. Then clG = 5(2)m2 3
2k = 3 + 2m1
Remark 1.

k=0

Proof. The conjugacy classes of G are 5, 7, 11, 19, 35, 67 for m = 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

respectively. So we construct the sequence {ai }
i=1 , where a1 = 5 and ai =

DIHEDRAL GROUPS OF ORDER 2m+1

2ai1 3. Then, with some calculus works, we modify these terms to get
ai = 2i1 a1 3(2)i2 3(2)i3 3(2)0 = 5(2)i1 3

i2
X

2k ,

k=0

but m = i + 1, after replacing i, then the right side will give the required values,
m3
X
and the result terms are 5 for m = 2 and 5(2)m2 3
2k = 3 + 2m1 for
m 3.

k=0

Theorem 2. Under the same assumptions of Remark 1, the group G is

nilpotent of class m.


Proof. Let D2n = r, s | r n = s2 = (r k s)2 = e, k = 1, 2, , n .
Recall that the lower central series of a group G is
G = G1 E G2 E G3 E E Gk E ,
where G1 = G , and Gk+1 = [Gk , G], note that [Gk , G] = {[x, y] | x Gk , y
G}, the group G is nilpotent if [Gk , G] = e for some k, and the smallest such k
is the class of nilpotency.
Let G = D2n , where n = 2m , then G2 = [G, G] =< r 2 > and |G2 | = 2m /2 =
2m1 , Consequently:
|G3 | = |[G2 , G]| = | < r 4 > | = 2m /22 = 2m2 , , |[Gk , G]| = 2m /2k =
2mk , All Gi are well define for i = 1, 2, , k and |[Gm , G]| = 2mm = 1 then
[Gm , G] is the trivial group, therefore, G is nilpotent of class m.
The following corollary is a consequence result of Theorem 2.
Corollary 2. Let G be the dihedral group of order 2n, where n =
2m , m > 1. Then the following hold:
1. The group G is solvable, and G(2) = [[G, G], [G, G]] = {e}.
2. If m = 1 then G is Abelian group, and G is not Abelian group for m 2.
3. G has no proper Sylow p-subgroups, and the only Sylow 2-subgroup of G
is G itself.
4. The radical of G is also G, i.e., the largest solvable normal subgroup of G
is G.

B.N. Al-Hasanat, O.A. Almatroud, M.S. Ababneh

5. |G | = |[G : G]| = 2m1 . Moreover, the order of the factor group of G is
|F (G)| = |G|G | = 4.
6. Z(G) = {e, r 2

m1

Proof.
then

}, where Z(G) is the center of G.

1. Every nilpotent group is solvable, and G2 = [G, G] =< r 2 >,

[[G, G], [G, G]] = 
[< r 2 >, < r 2 >]
= [x, y] | x = r 2k , y = r 2m ,

k = 1, 2, , n2 , m = 1, 2, , n2
= {e}.

2. For m = 1, then D2n = D4 = {e, r, s, rs}, it is easy to check that D4 is

Abelian, where sr = srss = r 1 s = rs but for m > 1, then |r| > 2 so
rs 6= sr, hence D2n is not Abelian group for m > 1.
3. Let G = D2n where n = 2m , then |G| = 2m+1 . Then |x| = 2 if x is
reflection and |x| = n = 2m+1 for rotations, so G is 2-group, the only
prime devisor of |G| is 2. So there is only one Sylow 2-subgroup of G
which G.
4. This is a consequence result from item 3.
5. It is clear from the proof of Theorem 2.2.
6. The center of the dihedral group is {e} if n is odd, or {e, x} if n is even.
For G is a dihedral group of even order, then |Z(G)| = 2, x is the only
element which commute with all other elements, so x must be the rotation
of 180 . That is, the n rotations by 2/n gives the identical rotation 360 ,
and n2 rotations gives which is the convex situation. So, for all y G,
m1
Z(G).
we have, r n/2 y = yr n/2 . Then r n/2 = r 2

References
[1] Conrad Keith, Dihedral Groups, Retrieved from:
http://www.math.uconn.edu/kconrad/blurbs/grouptheory/dihedral.pdf.
[2] Conrad Keith, Dihedral Groups II Retrieved from:
http://www.math.uconn.edu/kconrad/blurbs/grouptheory/dihedral2.pdf.

DIHEDRAL GROUPS OF ORDER 2m+1

[3] David S. Dummit, Richard M. Foote, Abstract Algebra, 3-rd Ed., John
Wiley and Sons (2004), ISBN 0-471-43334-9.
[4] Jaume Aguade, Carles Broto, and Laia Saumell, Rank two integral representations of the infinite dihedral group, Communications in Algebra, 35
(2007), 1539-1551.
[5] I. Martin Issacs, Finite Group Theory, American Mathematical Society
(2008), ISBN 978-0-8218-4344-4.
[6] Marlos Viana, Vasudevan Lakhsminarayanan, Dihedral representations
and statistical geometric optics, II: Elementary optical instruments, Journal of Modern Optics, 54, No. 4 (2007), 473-485.
[7] G.A. Miller, Automorphisms of the dihedral groups, Proc. N.A.S., 28
(1942), 368-371.
[8] Morton Hamermesh, Group Theory and its Application to Physical Problems, Addison Wesley (1989), ISBN 0-486-66181-4.