Commutator collecting process
In group theory, a branch of mathematics, the commutator collecting process is a method for writing an element of a group as a product of generators and their higher commutators arranged in a certain order. The commutator collecting process was introduced by Philip Hall in 1934[1] and articulated by Wilhelm Magnus in 1937.[2] The process is sometimes called a "collection process".
The process can be generalized to define a totally ordered subset of a free non-associative algebra, that is, a free magma; this subset is called the Hall set. Members of the Hall set are binary trees; these can be placed in one-to-one correspondence with words, these being called the Hall words; the Lyndon words are a special case. Hall sets are used to construct a basis for a free Lie algebra, entirely analogously to the commutator collecting process. Hall words also provide a unique factorization of monoids.
Statement
The commutator collecting process is usually stated for free groups, as a similar theorem then holds for any group by writing it as a quotient of a free group.
Suppose F1 is a free group on generators a1, ..., am. Define the descending central series by putting
- Fn+1 = [Fn, F1]
The basic commutators are elements of F1 defined and ordered as follows:
- The basic commutators of weight 1 are the generators a1, ..., am.
- The basic commutators of weight w > 1 are the elements [x, y] where x and y are basic commutators whose weights sum to w, such that x > y and if x = [u, v] for basic commutators u and v then v ≤ y.
Commutators are ordered so that x > y if x has weight greater than that of y, and for commutators of any fixed weight some total ordering is chosen.
Then Fn /Fn+1 is a finitely generated free abelian group with a basis consisting of basic commutators of weight n.
Then any element of F can be written as
- [math]\displaystyle{ g=c_1^{n_1}c_2^{n_2}\cdots c_k^{n_k}c }[/math]
where the ci are the basic commutators of weight at most m arranged in order, and c is a product of commutators of weight greater than m, and the ni are integers.
See also
References
- ↑ Hall, Philip (1934), "A contribution to the theory of groups of prime-power order", Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society 36: 29–95, doi:10.1112/plms/s2-36.1.29
- ↑ W. Magnus (1937), "Über Beziehungen zwischen höheren Kommutatoren", J. Grelle 177, 105-115.
Reading
- Hall, Marshall (1959), The theory of groups, Macmillan
- Huppert, B. (1967) (in German), Endliche Gruppen, Berlin, New York: Springer-Verlag, pp. 90–93, ISBN 978-3-540-03825-2, OCLC 527050
Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commutator collecting process.
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