Symmetric group:S5
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Contents |
Definition
The symmetric group S5 is defined in the following equivalent ways:
- It is the group of all permutations on a set of five elements, i.e., it is the symmetric group of degree five. In particular, it is a symmetric group of prime degree and symmetric group of prime power degree.
- It is the projective general linear group of degree two over the field of five elements, i.e., PGL(2,5).
Presentation
Arithmetic functions
Group properties
COMPARE AND CONTRAST: Want to know more about how this group compares with symmetric groups of other degrees? Read contrasting symmetric groups of various degrees.
| Property | Satisfied | Explanation | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abelian group | No | (1,2), (1,3) don't commute | Sn is non-abelian, .
|
| Nilpotent group | No | Centerless: The center is trivial | Sn is non-nilpotent, .
|
| Metacyclic group | No | No cyclic normal subgroup | Sn is not metacyclic, .
|
| Supersolvable group | No | No cyclic normal subgroup | Sn is not supersolvable, .
|
| Solvable group | No | The subgroup A5 is simple non-abelian | An is simple and hence Sn not solvable, .
|
| T-group | Yes | ||
| HN-group | Yes | ||
| Complete group | Yes | Centerless and every automorphism's inner | Symmetric groups are complete except the ones of degree 2,6. |
| Monolithic group | Yes | Monolith is the alternating group | All symmetric groups are monolithic; n = 4 is the only case the monolith is not the alternating group. |
| One-headed group | Yes | The alternating group is the unique maximal normal subgroup | True for all n > 1. |
Elements
Upto conjugacy
For convenience, we take the underlying set to be {1,2,3,4,5}.
There are seven conjugacy classes, corresponding to the unordered integer partitions of 5 (for more information, refer cycle type determines conjugacy class). We use the notation of the cycle decomposition for permutations:
| Partition | Verbal description of cycle type | Representative element with the cycle type | Size of conjugacy class | Formula calculating size | Even or odd? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 | five fixed points | () -- the identity element | 1 | | even |
| 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 | transposition: one 2-cycle, three fixed point | (1,2) | 10 | , also in this case | odd |
| 3 + 1 + 1 | one 3-cycle, two fixed points | (1,2,3) | 20 | | even |
| 2 + 2 + 1 | double transposition: two 2-cycles, one fixed point | (1,2)(3,4) | 15 | | even |
| 4 + 1 | one 4-cycle, one fixed point | (1,2,3,4) | 30 | | odd |
| 3 + 2 | one 3-cycle, one 2-cycle | (1,2,3)(4,5) | 20 | | odd |
| 5 | one 5-cycle | (1,2,3,4,5) | 24 | | even |
Upto automorphism
S5 is a complete group: in particular, every automorphism of the group is inner. Thus, the equivalence classes under automorphisms are the same as the conjugacy classes.
Endomorphisms
Automorphisms
Since S5 is a complete group, it is isomorphic to its automorphism group, where each element of S4 acts on S4 by conjugation.
Endomorphisms
S5 admits three kinds of endomorphisms (that is, it admits more endomorphisms, but any endomorphism is equivalent via an automorphism to one of these three):
- The endomorphism to the trivial group
- The identity map
- The endomorphism to a group of order two, given by the sign homomorphism
Subgroups
Further information: Subgroup structure of symmetric group:S5
GAP implementation
Group ID
This finite group has order 120 and has ID 34 among the group of order 120 in GAP's SmallGroup library. It can thus be defined using GAP's SmallGroup function as:
SmallGroup(120,34)
For instance, we can use the following assignment in GAP to create the group and name it G:
gap> G := SmallGroup(120,34);
Conversely, to check whether a given group G is in fact the group we want, we can use GAP's IdGroup function:
IdGroup(G) = [120,34]
or just do:
IdGroup(G)
to have GAP output the group ID, that we can then compare to what we want.
Other descriptions
The group can also be defined using GAP's SymmetricGroup function as:
SymmetricGroup(5)
(where
is the underlying prime for
)
; see also
: the number of conjugacy classes is
, where
.
.
.
, also
in this case