Group (mathematics)

In mathematics, a group is a set with an operation that combines any two elements of the set to produce a third element within the same set and the following conditions must hold: the operation is associative, it has an identity element, and every element of the set has an inverse element. For example, the integers with the addition operation form a group.
The concept of a group was elaborated for handling, in a unified way, many mathematical structures such as numbers, geometric shapes and polynomial roots. Because the concept of groups is ubiquitous in numerous areas both within and outside mathematics, some authors consider it as a central organizing principle of contemporary mathematics.
In geometry, groups arise naturally in the study of symmetries and geometric transformations: the symmetries of an object form a group, called the symmetry group of the object, and the transformations of a given type form a general group. Lie groups appear in symmetry groups in geometry, and also in the Standard Model of particle physics. The Poincaré group is a Lie group consisting of the symmetries of spacetime in special relativity. Point groups describe symmetry in molecular chemistry.
The concept of a group arose in the study of polynomial equations. Évariste Galois, in the 1830s, introduced the term group for the symmetry group of the roots of an equation, now called a Galois group. After contributions from other fields such as number theory and geometry, the group notion was generalized and firmly established around 1870. Modern group theory—an active mathematical discipline—studies groups in their own right. To explore groups, mathematicians have devised various notions to break groups into smaller, better-understandable pieces, such as subgroups, quotient groups and simple groups. In addition to their abstract properties, group theorists also study the different ways in which a group can be expressed concretely, both from a point of view of representation theory and of computational group theory. A theory has been developed for finite groups, which culminated with the classification of finite simple groups, completed in 2004. Since the mid-1980s, geometric group theory, which studies finitely generated groups as geometric objects, has become an active area in group theory.

Definition and illustration

First example: the integers

One of the more familiar groups is the set of integers
together with addition. For any two integers and, the sum is also an integer; this closure property says that is a binary operation on. The following properties of integer addition serve as a model for the group axioms in the definition below.

For all integers, and , one has. Expressed in words, adding to first, and then adding the result to gives the same final result as adding to the sum of and . This property is known as associativity.
If is any integer, then and. Zero is called the identity element of addition because adding it to any integer returns the same integer.
For every integer, there is an integer such that and. The integer is called the inverse element of the integer and is denoted .

The integers, together with the operation, form a mathematical object belonging to a broad class sharing similar structural aspects. To appropriately understand these structures as a collective, the following definition is developed.

Definition

A group is a set together with a binary operation on, here denoted "", that combines any two elements and of to form an element of, denoted, such that the following three requirements, known as group axioms, are satisfied:
; Associativity : For all,, in, one has.
; Identity element : There exists an element in such that, for every in, one has and.
; Inverse element : For each in, there exists an element in such that and, where is the identity element.
Note: [|Uniqueness of the identity] and [|uniqueness of inverse elements] are not part of the axioms; they are consequences of the three axioms.

Notation and terminology

Formally, a group is an ordered pair of a set and a binary operation on this set that satisfies the group axioms. The set is called the underlying set of the group, and the operation is called the group operation or the group law.
A group and its underlying set are thus two different mathematical objects. To avoid cumbersome notation, it is common to abuse notation by using the same symbol to denote both. This reflects also an informal way of thinking: that the group is the same as the set except that it has been enriched by additional structure provided by the operation.
For example, consider the set of real numbers, which has the operations of addition and multiplication. Formally, is a set, is a group, and is a field. But it is common to write to denote any of these three objects.
The additive group of the field is the group whose underlying set is and whose operation is addition. The multiplicative group of the field is the group whose underlying set is the set of nonzero real numbers and whose operation is multiplication.
More generally, one speaks of an additive group whenever the group operation is notated as addition; in this case, the identity is typically denoted, and the inverse of an element is denoted. Similarly, one speaks of a multiplicative group whenever the group operation is notated as multiplication; in this case, the identity is typically denoted, and the inverse of an element is denoted. In a multiplicative group, the operation symbol is usually omitted entirely, so that the operation is denoted by juxtaposition, instead of.
The definition of a group does not require that for all elements and in. If this additional condition holds, then the operation is said to be commutative, and the group is called an abelian group. It is a common convention that for an abelian group either additive or multiplicative notation may be used, but for a nonabelian group only multiplicative notation is used.
Several other notations are commonly used for groups whose elements are not numbers. For a group whose elements are functions, the operation is often function composition ; then the identity may be denoted id. In the more specific cases of geometric transformation groups, symmetry groups, permutation groups, and automorphism groups, the symbol is often omitted, as for multiplicative groups. Many other variants of notation may be encountered.

Second example: a symmetry group

Two figures in the plane are congruent if one can be changed into the other using a combination of rotations, reflections, and translations. Any figure is congruent to itself. However, some figures are congruent to themselves in more than one way, and these extra congruences are called symmetries. A square has eight symmetries. These are:

the identity operation leaving everything unchanged, denoted ;
rotations of the square around its center by 90°, 180°, and 270° clockwise, denoted by, and, respectively;
reflections about the horizontal and vertical middle line, or through the two diagonals.

These symmetries are functions. Each sends a point in the square to the corresponding point under the symmetry. For example, sends a point to its rotation 90° clockwise around the square's center, and sends a point to its reflection across the square's vertical middle line. Composing two of these symmetries gives another symmetry. These symmetries determine a group called the dihedral group of degree four, denoted. The underlying set of the group is the above set of symmetries, and the group operation is function composition. Two symmetries are combined by composing them as functions, that is, applying the first one to the square, and the second one to the result of the first application. The result of performing first and then is written symbolically from right to left as . This is the usual notation for the composition of functions.
A Cayley table lists the results of all such compositions possible. For example, rotating by 270° clockwise and then reflecting horizontally is the same as performing a reflection along the diagonal. Using the above symbols, highlighted in blue in the Cayley table:
Given this set of symmetries and the described operation, the group axioms can be understood as follows:

Binary operation: Composition is a binary operation. That is, is a symmetry for any two symmetries and. For example, That is, rotating 270° clockwise after reflecting horizontally equals reflecting along the counter-diagonal. Indeed, every other combination of two symmetries still gives a symmetry, as can be checked using the Cayley table.
Associativity: The associativity axiom deals with composing more than two symmetries: Starting with three elements, and of, there are two possible ways of using these three symmetries in this order to determine a symmetry of the square. One of these ways is to first compose and into a single symmetry, then to compose that symmetry with. The other way is to first compose and, then to compose the resulting symmetry with. These two ways must always give the same result, that is, For example, can be checked using the Cayley table:
Identity element: The identity element is, as it does not change any symmetry when composed with it either on the left or on the right.
Inverse element: Each symmetry has an inverse:, the reflections,,, and the 180° rotation are their own inverse, because performing them twice brings the square back to its original orientation. The rotations and are each other's inverses, because rotating 90° and then rotating 270° yields a rotation over 360° which leaves the square unchanged. This is easily verified in the table.

In contrast to the group of integers above, where the order of the operation is immaterial, it does matter in, as, for example, but. In other words, is not abelian.