 | This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(May 2018) |
In mathematics, the Burnside ring of a finite group is an algebraic construction that encodes the different ways the group can act on finite sets. The ideas were introduced by William Burnside at the end of the nineteenth century. The algebraic ring structure is a more recent development, due to Solomon (1967).
Given a finite group G, the generators of its Burnside ring Ω(G) are the formal sums of isomorphism classes of finite G-sets. For the ring structure, addition is given by disjoint union of G-sets and multiplication by their Cartesian product.
The Burnside ring is a free Z-module, whose generators are the (isomorphism classes of) orbit types of G.
If G acts on a finite set X, then one can write (disjoint union), where each Xi is a single G-orbit. Choosing any element xi in Xi creates an isomorphism G/Gi → Xi, where Gi is the stabilizer (isotropy) subgroup of G at xi. A different choice of representative yi in Xi gives a conjugate subgroup to Gi as stabilizer. This shows that the generators of Ω(G) as a Z-module are the orbits G/H as H ranges over conjugacy classes of subgroups of G.
In other words, a typical element of Ω(G) is
where ai in Z and G1, G2, ..., GN are representatives of the conjugacy classes of subgroups of G.
Much as character theory simplifies working with group representations, marks simplify working with permutation representations and the Burnside ring.
If G acts on X, and H ≤ G (H is a subgroup of G), then the mark of H on X is the number of elements of X that are fixed by every element of H: , where
If H and K are conjugate subgroups, then mX(H) = mX(K) for any finite G-set X; indeed, if K = gHg−1 then XK = g · XH.
It is also easy to see that for each H ≤ G, the map Ω(G) → Z : X ↦ mX(H) is a homomorphism. This means that to know the marks of G, it is sufficient to evaluate them on the generators of Ω(G), viz. the orbits G/H.
For each pair of subgroups H,K ≤ G define
This is mX(H) for X = G/K. The condition HgK = gK is equivalent to g−1Hg ≤ K, so if H is not conjugate to a subgroup of K then m(K, H) = 0.
To record all possible marks, one forms a table, Burnside's Table of Marks, as follows: Let G1 (= trivial subgroup), G2, ..., GN = G be representatives of the N conjugacy classes of subgroups of G, ordered in such a way that whenever Gi is conjugate to a subgroup of Gj, then i ≤ j. Now define the N × N table (square matrix) whose (i, j)th entry is m(Gi, Gj). This matrix is lower triangular, and the elements on the diagonal are non-zero so it is invertible.
It follows that if X is a G-set, and u its row vector of marks, so ui = mX(Gi), then X decomposes as a disjoint union of ai copies of the orbit of type Gi, where the vector a satisfies,
where M is the matrix of the table of marks. This theorem is due to ( Burnside 1897 ).
The table of marks for the cyclic group of order 6:
| Z6 | 1 | Z2 | Z3 | Z6 |
| Z6 / 1 | 6 | . | . | . |
| Z6 / Z2 | 3 | 3 | . | . |
| Z6 / Z3 | 2 | 0 | 2 | . |
| Z6 / Z6 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
The table of marks for the symmetric group S3:
| S3 | 1 | Z2 | Z3 | S3 |
| S3 / 1 | 6 | . | . | . |
| S3 / Z2 | 3 | 1 | . | . |
| S3 / Z3 | 2 | 0 | 2 | . |
| S3 / S3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
The dots in the two tables are all zeros, merely emphasizing the fact that the tables are lower-triangular.
(Some authors use the transpose of the table, but this is how Burnside defined it originally.)
The fact that the last row is all 1s is because [G/G] is a single point. The diagonal terms are m(H, H) = | NG(H)/H |. The numbers in the first column show the degree of the representation.
The ring structure of Ω(G) can be deduced from these tables: the generators of the ring (as a Z-module) are the rows of the table, and the product of two generators has mark given by the product of the marks (so component-wise multiplication of row vectors), which can then be decomposed as a linear combination of all the rows. For example, with S3,
as (3, 1, 0, 0).(2, 0, 2, 0) = (6, 0, 0, 0).
Associated to any finite set X is a vector space V = VX, which is the vector space with the elements of X as the basis (using any specified field). An action of a finite group G on X induces a linear action on V, called a permutation representation. The set of all finite-dimensional representations of G has the structure of a ring, the representation ring, denoted R(G).
For a given G-set X, the character of the associated representation is
where is the cyclic group generated by .
The resulting map
taking a G-set to the corresponding representation is in general neither injective nor surjective.
The simplest example showing that β is not in general injective is for G = S3 (see table above), and is given by
The Burnside ring for compact groups is described in ( tom Dieck 1987 ).
The Segal conjecture relates the Burnside ring to homotopy.
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, many sets of transformations form a group under function composition; for example, the rotations around a point in the plane. It is often useful to consider the group as an abstract group, and to say that one has a group action of the abstract group that consists of performing the transformations of the group of transformations. The reason for distinguishing the group from the transformations is that, generally, a group of transformations of a structure acts also on various related structures; for example, the above rotation group acts also on triangles by transforming triangles into triangles.
In mathematics, especially group theory, two elements and of a group are conjugate if there is an element in the group such that This is an equivalence relation whose equivalence classes are called conjugacy classes. In other words, each conjugacy class is closed under for all elements in the group.
In abstract algebra, a cyclic group or monogenous group is a group, denoted Cn, that is generated by a single element. That is, it is a set of invertible elements with a single associative binary operation, and it contains an element g such that every other element of the group may be obtained by repeatedly applying the group operation to g or its inverse. Each element can be written as an integer power of g in multiplicative notation, or as an integer multiple of g in additive notation. This element g is called a generator of the group.
In mathematics, specifically in the field of finite group theory, the Sylow theorems are a collection of theorems named after the Norwegian mathematician Peter Ludwig Sylow that give detailed information about the number of subgroups of fixed order that a given finite group contains. The Sylow theorems form a fundamental part of finite group theory and have very important applications in the classification of finite simple groups.
In mathematics, specifically group theory, a subgroup H of a group G may be used to decompose the underlying set of G into disjoint, equal-size subsets called cosets. There are left cosets and right cosets. Cosets have the same number of elements (cardinality) as does H. Furthermore, H itself is both a left coset and a right coset. The number of left cosets of H in G is equal to the number of right cosets of H in G. This common value is called the index of H in G and is usually denoted by [G : H].
In mathematics, the name symplectic group can refer to two different, but closely related, collections of mathematical groups, denoted Sp(2n, F) and Sp(n) for positive integer n and field F (usually C or R). The latter is called the compact symplectic group and is also denoted by . Many authors prefer slightly different notations, usually differing by factors of 2. The notation used here is consistent with the size of the most common matrices which represent the groups. In Cartan's classification of the simple Lie algebras, the Lie algebra of the complex group Sp(2n, C) is denoted Cn, and Sp(n) is the compact real form of Sp(2n, C). Note that when we refer to the (compact) symplectic group it is implied that we are talking about the collection of (compact) symplectic groups, indexed by their dimension n.
In mathematics, specifically group theory, the index of a subgroup H in a group G is the number of left cosets of H in G, or equivalently, the number of right cosets of H in G. The index is denoted or or . Because G is the disjoint union of the left cosets and because each left coset has the same size as H, the index is related to the orders of the two groups by the formula
In mathematics, the adele ring of a global field is a central object of class field theory, a branch of algebraic number theory. It is the restricted product of all the completions of the global field and is an example of a self-dual topological ring.
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 mathematics, the Heisenberg group, named after Werner Heisenberg, is the group of 3×3 upper triangular matrices of the form
In differential geometry, the holonomy of a connection on a smooth manifold is a general geometrical consequence of the curvature of the connection measuring the extent to which parallel transport around closed loops fails to preserve the geometrical data being transported. For flat connections, the associated holonomy is a type of monodromy and is an inherently global notion. For curved connections, holonomy has nontrivial local and global features.
In mathematics, more specifically in group theory, the character of a group representation is a function on the group that associates to each group element the trace of the corresponding matrix. The character carries the essential information about the representation in a more condensed form. Georg Frobenius initially developed representation theory of finite groups entirely based on the characters, and without any explicit matrix realization of representations themselves. This is possible because a complex representation of a finite group is determined by its character. The situation with representations over a field of positive characteristic, so-called "modular representations", is more delicate, but Richard Brauer developed a powerful theory of characters in this case as well. Many deep theorems on the structure of finite groups use characters of modular representations.
In group theory, a branch of abstract algebra, a character table is a two-dimensional table whose rows correspond to irreducible representations, and whose columns correspond to conjugacy classes of group elements. The entries consist of characters, the traces of the matrices representing group elements of the column's class in the given row's group representation. In chemistry, crystallography, and spectroscopy, character tables of point groups are used to classify e.g. molecular vibrations according to their symmetry, and to predict whether a transition between two states is forbidden for symmetry reasons. Many university level textbooks on physical chemistry, quantum chemistry, spectroscopy and inorganic chemistry devote a chapter to the use of symmetry group character tables.
In mathematics, Burnside's theorem in group theory states that if G is a finite group of order where p and q are prime numbers, and a and b are non-negative integers, then G is solvable. Hence each non-Abelian finite simple group has order divisible by at least three distinct primes.
In mathematics, specifically in group theory, the direct product is an operation that takes two groups G and H and constructs a new group, usually denoted G × H. This operation is the group-theoretic analogue of the Cartesian product of sets and is one of several important notions of direct product in mathematics.
In mathematics, the special linear group SL(2, R) or SL2(R) is the group of 2 × 2 real matrices with determinant one:
In mathematics, a group is called boundedly generated if it can be expressed as a finite product of cyclic subgroups. The property of bounded generation is also closely related with the congruence subgroup problem.
This is a glossary of algebraic geometry.
Symmetries in quantum mechanics describe features of spacetime and particles which are unchanged under some transformation, in the context of quantum mechanics, relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, and with applications in the mathematical formulation of the standard model and condensed matter physics. In general, symmetry in physics, invariance, and conservation laws, are fundamentally important constraints for formulating physical theories and models. In practice, they are powerful methods for solving problems and predicting what can happen. While conservation laws do not always give the answer to the problem directly, they form the correct constraints and the first steps to solving a multitude of problems.
