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04.4 The Symmetric Group

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79 views2 pages

04.4 The Symmetric Group

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joysinna
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4.

4 The symmetric group

We have already met the symmetric group (Sn , ∘) and studied its elements. Here’s a reminder
of what we proved in the first part of the course:

Sn is the set of all bijections from {1, 2, … , n} to itself, that is, all permutations of
{1, 2, … , n} . It is a group under composition of functions.
If a1 , … , am are distinct then (a1 , … , am ) is the permutation which sends ai to ai+1 for
i < m am , to a1 , and anything not equal to ai for some i to itself. Such a permutation is
called an m-cycle, and a permutation which is an m-cycle for some m is called a cycle.
Two cycles (a1 , … , am ) and (b1 , … , bl ) are called disjoint if no ai is equal to any bj .
Any permutation σ ∈ Sn can be written as a product of disjoint cycles.
|Sn | = n! = n(n − 1) ⋯ ⋅ 2 ⋅ 1 .

Lemma 4.6 The order of an m-cycle is m.


Proof. Let σ = (a0 , a1 , … , am−1 ) be an m-cycle. We have σ(ai ) = ai+1 for all i, where the
addition is done in Zm . So 2
σ (ai ) = σ(ai+1 ) = ai+2 , and you can prove by induction that
k
σ (ai ) = ai+k . The smallest k > 0 such that i + k = i is k = m , so the smallest power of σ

which is the identity is m. ▢

Not only did we prove that any element σ ∈ Sn equalled a product of disjoint cycles, we saw
how to find the disjoint cycles required by finding the orbits of σ. As a reminder, consider

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
σ = ( ).
4 1 3 2 6 7 5

At the first step we choose the number 1. We have


2
σ(1) = 4, σ (1) = σ(σ(1)) = 2, σ (1) = σ(2) = 1
3
. So the first cycle is (1, 4, 2) . Not all of
the numbers 1, 2, … , 7 appear in this cycle, so we go back to step one and pick one that
doesn’t appear, say 3. Since σ(3) = 3 , the cycle that we add is just (3) , so we now have
(1, 4, 2)(3) .
Next we pick a number that hasn’t appeared yet, say 5. We have
2 3
σ(5) = 6, σ (5) = σ(6) = 7, σ (5) = σ(7) = 5 , and so the cycle we add is (5, 6, 7) and we
now have

σ = (1, 4, 2)(3)(5, 6, 7)

and since there aren’t any elements of 1, 2, … , 7 that don’t appear in one of our cycles, the
algorithm stops.

Notice the one-cycle (3) appears. But it is the identity permutation and composing with the
identity doesn’t change anything, so we usually omit one-cycles when we write permutations
like this.

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