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The importance and applications of order of a group?

Mathematics Asked on December 8, 2021

Recently, I’m exposed to some exercises and theorems concerning order of a group. For example,

IMHO, the classic result of this kind is Sylow theorems that appear in most standard textbooks about abstract algebra. As such, I would like to ask about the importance of order of a group in abstract algebra and its applications in other branches of mathemactics.

Thank you for your elaboration!

One Answer

The classification of finite simple groups was one of the great mathematical achievements of the 20th Century. It is also one where a single result on the order of the groups played a key role, namely the Feit–Thompson theorem, or odd order theorem:

Theorem. (Feit-Thompson, 1963) Every group of odd order is soluble*.

The proof is famously long, at 255 pages, and has recently been Coq-verified [1].

The derived subgroup of a soluble group is a proper normal subgroup, and so a soluble group is simple only if it is abelian. Therefore, the Feit-Thompson theorem has the following corollary:

Corollary. Every non-cyclic finite simple group has even order.

There are other results in this vein, with much shorter proofs. For example, Burnside's theorem (Wikipedia contains a proof):

Theorem. (Burnside, 1904) Let $p, q, a, binmathbb{N}$ with $p, q$ primes. Then every group of order $p^aq^b$ is soluble.

Therefore, every non-cyclic finite simple group must have order divisible by three primes. Moreover, at least one of these primes occurs twice in the prime decomposition of the order:

Theorem. (Frobenius, 1893) Groups of square-free order are soluble.

You can find a proof of this theorem on Math.SE here. The answer there links to the article [2], where the theorem is Proposition 17 (page 9). The article also claims that the result is due to Frobenius in [3].

*In American English, solvable.

[1] Gonthier, Georges, et al. "A machine-checked proof of the odd order theorem." International Conference on Interactive Theorem Proving. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013.

[2] Ganev, Iordan. "Groups of a Square-Free Order." Rose-Hulman Undergraduate Mathematics Journal 11.1 (2010): 7 (link)

[3] Frobenius, F. G. "Uber auflösbare Gruppen." Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wiss. zu Berlin (1893): 337-345.

Answered by user1729 on December 8, 2021

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