Euler's totient functionIn number theory, Euler's totient function counts the positive integers up to a given integer n that are relatively prime to n. It is written using the Greek letter phi as or , and may also be called Euler's phi function. In other words, it is the number of integers k in the range 1 ≤ k ≤ n for which the greatest common divisor gcd(n, k) is equal to 1. The integers k of this form are sometimes referred to as totatives of n. For example, the totatives of n = 9 are the six numbers 1, 2, 4, 5, 7 and 8.
SubgroupIn 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". The trivial subgroup of any group is the subgroup {e} consisting of just the identity element. A proper subgroup of a group G is a subgroup H which is a proper subset of G (that is, H ≠ G).
Symmetric groupIn abstract algebra, the symmetric group defined over any set is the group whose elements are all the bijections from the set to itself, and whose group operation is the composition of functions. In particular, the finite symmetric group defined over a finite set of symbols consists of the permutations that can be performed on the symbols. Since there are ( factorial) such permutation operations, the order (number of elements) of the symmetric group is .
Alternating groupIn mathematics, an alternating group is the group of even permutations of a finite set. The alternating group on a set of n elements is called the alternating group of degree n, or the alternating group on n letters and denoted by A_n or Alt(n). For n > 1, the group An is the commutator subgroup of the symmetric group Sn with index 2 and has therefore n!/2 elements. It is the kernel of the signature group homomorphism sgn : Sn → explained under symmetric group. The group An is abelian if and only if n ≤ 3 and simple if and only if n = 3 or n ≥ 5.
Fermat's little theoremFermat's little theorem states that if p is a prime number, then for any integer a, the number is an integer multiple of p. In the notation of modular arithmetic, this is expressed as For example, if a = 2 and p = 7, then 27 = 128, and 128 − 2 = 126 = 7 × 18 is an integer multiple of 7. If a is not divisible by p, that is if a is coprime to p, Fermat's little theorem is equivalent to the statement that ap − 1 − 1 is an integer multiple of p, or in symbols: For example, if a = 2 and p = 7, then 26 = 64, and 64 − 1 = 63 = 7 × 9 is thus a multiple of 7.
Generating set of a groupIn abstract algebra, a generating set of a group is a subset of the group set such that every element of the group can be expressed as a combination (under the group operation) of finitely many elements of the subset and their inverses. In other words, if is a subset of a group , then , the subgroup generated by , is the smallest subgroup of containing every element of , which is equal to the intersection over all subgroups containing the elements of ; equivalently, is the subgroup of all elements of that can be expressed as the finite product of elements in and their inverses.
Permutation groupIn mathematics, a permutation group is a group G whose elements are permutations of a given set M and whose group operation is the composition of permutations in G (which are thought of as bijective functions from the set M to itself). The group of all permutations of a set M is the symmetric group of M, often written as Sym(M). The term permutation group thus means a subgroup of the symmetric group. If M = {1, 2, ..., n} then Sym(M) is usually denoted by Sn, and may be called the symmetric group on n letters.
Cauchy's theorem (group theory)In mathematics, specifically group theory, Cauchy's theorem states that if G is a finite group and p is a prime number dividing the order of G (the number of elements in G), then G contains an element of order p. That is, there is x in G such that p is the smallest positive integer with xp = e, where e is the identity element of G. It is named after Augustin-Louis Cauchy, who discovered it in 1845. The theorem is related to Lagrange's theorem, which states that the order of any subgroup of a finite group G divides the order of G.
Multiplicative groupIn mathematics and group theory, the term multiplicative group refers to one of the following concepts: the group under multiplication of the invertible elements of a field, ring, or other structure for which one of its operations is referred to as multiplication. In the case of a field F, the group is (F ∖ {0}, •), where 0 refers to the zero element of F and the binary operation • is the field multiplication, the algebraic torus GL(1).. The multiplicative group of integers modulo n is the group under multiplication of the invertible elements of .
