Special affine group

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Template:Field-parametrized linear algebraic group

This article is about a standard (though not very rudimentary) definition in group theory. The article text may, however, contain more than just the basic definition
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Definition

Let be a natural number and be a field. The special affine group or affine special linear group of degree over , denoted , , , or , is defined as the external semidirect product of the vector space by the special linear group .

It can be viewed as a subgroup of the general affine group, which is the semidirect product of the vector space with the whole general linear group.

While the general affine group cannot be realized as a subgroup of the general linear group , it can be realized as a subgroup of in a fairly typical way: the vector from is the first entries of the right column, the matrix from is the top left block, there is a in the bottom right corner, and zeroes elsewhere on the bottom row. Then is the subgroup of this group consisting of matrices with determinant (that is, the top left block has determinant .)