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A First Course in Group Theory

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DOI: 10.1007/978-981-16-6365-9

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A First Course in Group Theory
Bijan Davvaz

A First Course in Group

Theory
Bijan Davvaz
Department of Mathematics
Yazd University
Yazd, Iran

ISBN 978-981-16-6364-2 ISBN 978-981-16-6365-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6365-9

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Preface

The aim of this book is to provide a readable account of the examples and fundamental
results of groups from a theoretical point of view and a geometrical point of view.
The concept of a group is one of the most fundamental in modern mathematics.
Groups are systems consisting of a set of elements and a binary operation that can
be applied to two elements of the set, which together satisfy certain axioms. These
require that the group is closed under the operation (the combination of any two
elements produces another element of the group), that it obey the associative law,
that it contains an identity element (which, combined with any other element, leaves
the latter unchanged), and that each element have an inverse (which combines with
an element to produce the identity element).
Since the book does not make any assumptions about the reader’s background, it
is suitable for newcomers to group theory and even those who never studied algebra.
To explain many subjects we used figures and images to help the readers.
The book is organized into eleven chapters. To get to any depth in group theory
requires set theory, combinatorics, number theory, matrix theory, and geometry. Thus,
not only we have devoted Chaps. 1–2 to the introductory concepts of set theory,
combinations, number theory, and symmetry, but we have also devoted some parts
of Chap. 7 to matrix theory. Although the main subject of the book is groups but in
many parts we will need some information about other algebraic structures, like rings,
fields and vector spaces. In Chap. 3, we give the definitions of group and subgroup,
examples and some elementary properties. Several excellent and important examples
of groups like cyclic groups, permutation groups, group of arithmetical functions,
matrix groups and linear groups are investigated in Chaps. 4–7. In Chap. 8, Lagrange’s
theorem as the most important theorem in finite groups is discussed. Chapters 9–11
address the normal subgroups, factor groups, derived subgroup, homomorphism,
isomorphism and automorphism of groups. A consequence is Cayley’s theorem in
which every group could be realized as a permutation group.
Some chapters or sections are labelled as optional; this means that the readers can
ignore them for the first study. Each section ends in a collection of exercises. The
purpose of these exercises is to allow students to test their assimilation of the material,

v
vi Preface

to challenge their knowledge and ability. Moreover, at the end of each chapter we
have two special sections: (1) Worked-Out Problems; (2) Supplementary Exercises.
In each worked-out problems section, I decided to try teach by examples, by
writing out to solutions to problems. In choosing problems, three major criteria have
been considered, to be challenging, interesting and educational. Moreover, there are
many exercises at the end of each chapter as supplementary exercises. They are
harder than before and serve to present the interesting concepts and theorems which
are not discussed in the text.
The list of references at the end of the book is confined to works actually used in
the text.

Yazd, Iran Bijan Davvaz

Contents

1 Preliminaries Notions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Sets and Equivalence Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.3 Ordered Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.4 Combinatorial Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
1.5 Divisibility and Prime Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.6 Worked-Out Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.7 Supplementary Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2 Symmetries of Shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.1 Symmetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.2 Translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.3 Rotation Symmetries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.4 Mirror Reflection Symmetries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.5 Congruence Transformations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.6 Worked-Out Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
2.7 Supplementary Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3 Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.1 A Short History of Group Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.2 Binary Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.3 Semigroups and Monoids (Optional) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.4 Groups and Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.5 Turning Groups into Latin Squares (Optional) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.6 Subgroups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
3.7 Worked-Out Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
3.8 Supplementary Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
4 Cyclic Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.1 Group of Integers Modulo n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.2 Cyclic Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.3 Generating Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

vii
viii Contents

4.4 Worked-Out Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

4.5 Supplementary Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
5 Permutation Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
5.1 Inverse Functions and Permutations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
5.2 Symmetric Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
5.3 Alternating Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
5.4 Worked-Out Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
5.5 Supplementary Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
6 Group of Arithmetical Functions (Optional) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
6.1 Arithmetical Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
6.2 Dirichlet Product and Its Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
6.3 Multiplicative Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
6.4 Worked-Out Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
6.5 Supplementary Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
7 Matrix Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
7.1 Introduction to Matrix Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
7.2 More About Vectors in Rn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
7.3 Rotation Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
7.4 Reflections in R2 and R3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
7.5 Translation and Scaling Matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
7.6 Dihedral Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
7.7 Quaternion Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
7.8 Worked-Out Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
7.9 Supplementary Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
8 Cosets of Subgroups and Lagrange’s Theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
8.1 Cosets and Their Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
8.2 Geometric Examples of Cosets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
8.3 Lagrange’s Theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
8.4 Index of Subgroups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
8.5 A Counting Principle and Double Cosets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
8.6 Worked-Out Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
8.7 Supplementary Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
9 Normal Subgroups and Factor Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
9.1 Normal Subgroups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
9.2 Factor Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
9.3 Cauchy’s Theorem and Class Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
9.4 Worked-Out Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
9.5 Supplementary Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Contents ix

10 Some Special Subgroups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

10.1 Commutators and Derived Subgroups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
10.2 Derived Subgroups of Some Special Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
10.3 Maximal Subgroups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
10.4 Worked-Out Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
10.5 Supplementary Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
11 Group Homomorphisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
11.1 Homomorphisms and Their Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
11.2 Isomorphism Theorems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 254
11.3 Cayley’s Theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
11.4 Automorphisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
11.5 Characteristic Subgroups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
11.6 Another View of Linear Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
11.7 Worked-Out Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
11.8 Supplementary Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
About the Author

Bijan Davvaz is Professor at the Department of Mathematics, Yazd University, Iran.

Earlier, he served as the Head of the Department of Mathematics (1998–2002),
Chairman of the Faculty of Science (2004–2006), and Vice-President for Research
(2006–2008) at Yazd University, Iran. He earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics with a
thesis on “Topics in Algebraic Hyperstructures” from Tarbiat Modarres University,
Iran, and completed his M.Sc. in Mathematics from the University of Tehran, Iran.
His areas of interest include algebra, algebraic hyperstructures, rough sets and fuzzy
logic. On the editorial boards for 25 mathematical journals, Prof. Davvaz has authored
6 books and over 600 research papers, especially on algebra, fuzzy logic, algebraic
hyperstructures and their applications.

xi
Notation

G, H , . . . sets, groups, . . .
∈, a ∈ A membership
∅ empty set
{x | p(x)} set of all x that p(x)
A⊆B A is a subset of B
A⊂B  A is a proper subset of B
A1 ∩ A2 ∩ · · · ∩ An and i∈I Ai intersection of sets
A1 ∪ A2 ∪ · · · ∪ An and i∈I Ai union of sets
A−B difference set of A and B
N natural numbers
Z integers, additive group and ring of integers
Q field of rational numbers
R field of real numbers
C field of complex numbers
F field
F∗ if F is a field, F∗ = F − {0}
R[x] ring of polynomials over a ring R
Zn ring and group of integers modulo n
Un group of units modulo n
a|b a divides b
ab a does not divide b
a ≡ b(mod n) congruence modulo n
(a, b) greatest common divisor of integers a and b
f :A→B a function of A to B
f (a) image of a under f
f (A) image of A under f
Imf image of f
f −1 (B) inverse image of B under f
idX the identity function X → X
ϕ Euler function
μ Möbius function

xiii
xiv Notation

f −1 the inverse of the function f

f ◦ g composite function
n
binomial coefficient n!/k!(n − k)!
k
|A| number of elements in a finite set A
|G| order of the group G
◦(a) order of element a
H ≤G H is a subgroup of G
H G H is a normal subgroup of G
a−1 the inverse of a
Z(G) center of G
CG (a) centralizer of a in G
CG (X ) centralizer of the set X in G
NG (X ) normalizer of the X in G
a cyclic group generated by a
X subgroup generated by a set X
AB {ab| a ∈ A and b ∈ B}
A = (aij ) matrix whose entry in row i and column j is aij
det(A) determinant of matrix A
In the identity n × n matrix
At transpose of the matrix A
tr(A) trace of the matrix A
Matm×n (F) the set of all m × n matrices over F
aH left coset
Ha right coset
G/H factor group
[G : H ] index of the subgroup H in the group G
G∼ =H G is isomorphic to H
Cn cyclic group of order n
SX symmetric group on X
Sn symmetric group of degree n
An alternating group
Dn dihedral group of order 2n
Q8 quaternion group
GLn (F) general linear group
SLn (F) special linear group
On (F) orthogonal group
SOn (F) special orthogonal group
UTn (F) the set of upper triangular matrices such that all
entries on the diagonal are non-zero
LTn (F) the set of lower triangular matrices such that all
entries on the diagonal are non-zero
X,Y inner product of two vectors
[x, y] x−1 y−1 xy
 Notation xv

G derived subgroup of a group G

Kerf Kernel of the homomorphism f
End (G) the set of all endomorphism from G to itself
Aut(G) automorphism group
Inn(G) inner automorphism group

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