In mathematics, the additive identity of a set that is equipped with the operation of addition is an element which, when added to any element x in the set, yields x. One of the most familiar additive identities is the number 0 from elementary mathematics, but additive identities occur in other mathematical structures where addition is defined, such as in groups and rings.
Let N be a group that is closed under the operation of addition, denoted +. An additive identity for N, denoted e, is an element in N such that for any element n in N,
Let (G, +) be a group and let 0 and 0' in G both denote additive identities, so for any g in G,
It then follows from the above that
In a system with a multiplication operation that distributes over addition, the additive identity is a multiplicative absorbing element, meaning that for any s in S, s · 0 = 0. This follows because:
Let R be a ring and suppose that the additive identity 0 and the multiplicative identity 1 are equal, i.e. 0 = 1. Let r be any element of R. Then
proving that R is trivial, i.e. R = {0}. The contrapositive, that if R is non-trivial then 0 is not equal to 1, is therefore shown.
In mathematics, an abelian group, also called a commutative group, is a group in which the result of applying the group operation to two group elements does not depend on the order in which they are written. That is, the group operation is commutative. With addition as an operation, the integers and the real numbers form abelian groups, and the concept of an abelian group may be viewed as a generalization of these examples. Abelian groups are named after early 19th century mathematician Niels Henrik Abel.
In mathematics, given two groups, (G,∗) and (H, ·), a group homomorphism from (G,∗) to (H, ·) is a function h : G → H such that for all u and v in G it holds that
In mathematics, a group is a set with an operation that satisfies the following constraints: the operation is associative and has an identity element, and every element of the set has an inverse element.
In mathematics, a product is the result of multiplication, or an expression that identifies objects to be multiplied, called factors. For example, 21 is the product of 3 and 7, and is the product of and . When one factor is an integer, the product is called a multiple.
In group theory, a branch of mathematics, given a group G under a binary operation ∗, a subset H of G is called a subgroup of G if H also forms a group under the operation ∗. More precisely, H is a subgroup of G if the restriction of ∗ to H × H is a group operation on H. This is often denoted H ≤ G, read as "H is a subgroup of G".
In mathematics, the concept of an inverse element generalises the concepts of opposite and reciprocal of numbers.
In mathematics, specifically in group theory, the concept of a semidirect product is a generalization of a direct product. There are two closely related concepts of semidirect product:
In mathematics, rings are algebraic structures that generalize fields: multiplication need not be commutative and multiplicative inverses need not exist. Informally, a ring is a set equipped with two binary operations satisfying properties analogous to those of addition and multiplication of integers. Ring elements may be numbers such as integers or complex numbers, but they may also be non-numerical objects such as polynomials, square matrices, functions, and power series.
In mathematics, in particular abstract algebra, a graded ring is a ring such that the underlying additive group is a direct sum of abelian groups such that . The index set is usually the set of nonnegative integers or the set of integers, but can be any monoid. The direct sum decomposition is usually referred to as gradation or grading.
An exact sequence is a sequence of morphisms between objects such that the image of one morphism equals the kernel of the next.
In mathematics, a free abelian group is an abelian group with a basis. Being an abelian group means that it is a set with an addition operation that is associative, commutative, and invertible. A basis, also called an integral basis, is a subset such that every element of the group can be uniquely expressed as an integer combination of finitely many basis elements. For instance the two-dimensional integer lattice forms a free abelian group, with coordinatewise addition as its operation, and with the two points (1,0) and (0,1) as its basis. Free abelian groups have properties which make them similar to vector spaces, and may equivalently be called free-modules, the free modules over the integers. Lattice theory studies free abelian subgroups of real vector spaces. In algebraic topology, free abelian groups are used to define chain groups, and in algebraic geometry they are used to define divisors.
In mathematics, the adjoint representation of a Lie group G is a way of representing the elements of the group as linear transformations of the group's Lie algebra, considered as a vector space. For example, if G is , the Lie group of real n-by-n invertible matrices, then the adjoint representation is the group homomorphism that sends an invertible n-by-n matrix to an endomorphism of the vector space of all linear transformations of defined by: .
In algebra, a valuation is a function on a field that provides a measure of the size or multiplicity of elements of the field. It generalizes to commutative algebra the notion of size inherent in consideration of the degree of a pole or multiplicity of a zero in complex analysis, the degree of divisibility of a number by a prime number in number theory, and the geometrical concept of contact between two algebraic or analytic varieties in algebraic geometry. A field with a valuation on it is called a valued field.
In algebra, a group ring is a free module and at the same time a ring, constructed in a natural way from any given ring and any given group. As a free module, its ring of scalars is the given ring, and its basis is the set of elements of the given group. As a ring, its addition law is that of the free module and its multiplication extends "by linearity" the given group law on the basis. Less formally, a group ring is a generalization of a given group, by attaching to each element of the group a "weighting factor" from a given ring.
In abstract algebra, a semiring is an algebraic structure. It is a generalization of a ring, dropping the requirement that each element must have an additive inverse. At the same time, it is a generalization of bounded distributive lattices.
In mathematics, the characteristic of a ring R, often denoted char(R), is defined to be the smallest positive number of copies of the ring's multiplicative identity (1) that will sum to the additive identity (0). If no such number exists, the ring is said to have characteristic zero.
In mathematics, a unipotent elementr of a ring R is one such that r − 1 is a nilpotent element; in other words, (r − 1)n is zero for some n.
In mathematics, a zero element is one of several generalizations of the number zero to other algebraic structures. These alternate meanings may or may not reduce to the same thing, depending on the context.
In mathematics, and in particular, algebra, a generalized inverse of an element x is an element y that has some properties of an inverse element but not necessarily all of them. The purpose of constructing a generalized inverse of a matrix is to obtain a matrix that can serve as an inverse in some sense for a wider class of matrices than invertible matrices. Generalized inverses can be defined in any mathematical structure that involves associative multiplication, that is, in a semigroup. This article describes generalized inverses of a matrix .
In mathematics, an algebraic number field is an extension field of the field of rational numbers such that the field extension has finite degree . Thus is a field that contains and has finite dimension when considered as a vector space over .