Prime order groups are cyclic

https://arbital.com/p/prime_order_group_is_cyclic

by Patrick Stevens Jun 17 2016 updated Jun 20 2016

This is the first step on the road to classifying the finite groups.


Let be a Group whose order is equal to , a Prime number. Then is isomorphic to the Cyclic group of order .

Proof

Pick any non-identity element of the group.

By Lagrange's theorem, the subgroup generated by has size or (since was prime). But it can't be because the only subgroup of size is the trivial subgroup.

Hence the subgroup must be the entire group.