A subgroup of a Group is a group of the form , where . We usually say simply that is a subgroup of .
For a subset of a group to be a subgroup, it needs to satisfy all of the group axioms itself: closure, associativity, identity, and [inverse_element inverse]. We get associativity for free because is a group. So the requirements of a subgroup are:
- Closure: For any in , is in .
- Identity: The identity of is in .
- [inverse_element Inverses]: For any in , is also in .
A subgroup is called normal if it is closed under conjugation.
The subgroup Relation is transitive: if is a subgroup of , and is a subgroup of , then is a subgroup of .
Examples
Any group is a subgroup of itself. The [-trivial_group] is a subgroup of every group.
For any Integer , the set of multiples of is a subgroup of the integers (under [-addition]).