Orbit under group action
Suppose is a group with a group action on a set . Then, for any point , the orbit of under the action of , denoted , is defined as:
In other words, the orbit of a point is the set of all points that can be reached from that point under the action of the group.
Because of the reversibility of the action of elements of the group, it turns out that if is in the orbit of , is also in the orbit of . Specifically, if , then . Hence we can talk of the relation of being in the same orbit. This relation is reflexive (because of the identity element), symmetric (because of invertibility) and transitive (because of the homomorphism nature of the group action), and hence gives an equivalence relation. The equivalence relation thus partitions into a disjoint union of orbits.