My solutions to select problems from the popular textbook, Abstract Algebra by David Dummit and Richard Foote. A word of caution: My proofs have not been reviewed. Bear in mind that a couple proofs have been inspired by posts on math.stackexchange.com.
Section 1.1
#9(b) Let . The operation is clearly associative. The identity is . Provided an element where , the inverse is
#22 If , then by distribution . Let . By the first statement , and hence or .
#25 Fix . Because and and , it follows that . Thus is abelian.
#31 Let be the set of elements of order not equal to two. is even because if , we have . The identity is not in because . Thus and , which implies the existence of an element of order two in , and hence .
Section 1.2
#16 We only need to show . Because , we have . Letting and , the proposition is proved.
Section 1.3
#19 By exercise 1.3.15, the possible orders are .
#20 (in cycles, one possibility is and ). We now want to prove that this is a presentation for . Because , all elements in are of the form
Because , we have
Using , we can simplify this to .
Section 1.4
#8 The following matrices in do not commute:
Section 1.5
#1 and and .
Section 1.6
#4 An isomorphism preserves the order of the elements: . Let be the number such that . Because , the order of must also be : a contradiction because has no elements of order .
#9 has an element of order , while doesn't.
#17 Let be the map such that . For , we have
is abelian if and only if .
#20 Because function composition is associative, is associative. The trivial automorphism () is the identity. Because each is bijective, there is an inverse (the proof that the inverse is in is trivial) such that where is the identity.
#24 If , then . Thus, and satisfy the same relations as where . The elements and clearly generate because and . Summarizing, we have shown
#26 The presentation of is . Because and satisfy the relations of (i.e. , etc.), is a homomorphism. Thus we can define something like as such:
is clearly injective because (you can check this by trying all elements in ).
Section 1.7
#18
#19 Let the map in consideration be . Define by . Then, is a two-sided inverse:
Thus is bijective, and (i.e. all orbits have cardinality ). Because the orbits partition , we have where is the number of orbits.
#20 Call the group of rigid motions , and label the four vertices of the tetrahedron . Then acts on , and with every action , there is a corresponding permutation in of . Thus is isomorphic to a subgroup of . If you fix one vertex of the tetrahedron, you get the possible motions, and doing this for all four vertices, you get . Because the only subgroup of of order is , we have .
#23 Let be the group of rigid motions of a cube. Because and , the action cannot be faithful. The kernel consists of the identity and the three exhanges of opposite faces.
Section 2.1
#6 Fix . Then . Clearly . Thus . Consider the matrices
and both have order , but has infinite order. Thus does not have a torsion subgroup.
#8 If or , then . Thus it follows that . Let . If , we are done. Assume . Fix such that and . By closure, . It follows that or which implies or . Because was arbitrary and we assumed , we must have . Because was arbitrary, we must have .
Section 2.2
#5a Because , we have . By Lagrange's theorem, is a multiple of . Because , and , we have , from which it follows that . Because , by Lagrange's theorem, is a multiple of . Because is also in , we know that . Thus , or .
#5b All elements in commute with each other. Thus . By Lagrange's theorem, is or . Because (e.g. ), we have that , or . Thus . Because , by Lagrange's theorem, is or . Because is also in , we know that . Thus , or .
#5c , so . By Lagrange's Theorem is or . Because does not commute with , we have , or . Similarly, is or because . Because , we have , or .
#7a, b Because , . Assume . Because ,
This is a contradiction because is odd by assumption that is odd. Thus for odd , . Assume that (i.e. is even). Then by the reasoning above.
#12a
#12b Clearly for any . Also,
Thus, we have a group action.
#12c Any permutation that fixes (e.g. ) stabilizes . Thus, the stabilizer of is the set of all permutations on ; This is .
#12d A permutation can stabilize by either fixing and , or exchanging them with each other. This corresponds to the subgroup . Because every nontrivial element is of order , this is an abelian subgroup of order .
#12e The stabilizer is
Letting and , we get an isomorphism because and satisfy the same relations as .
#12f The stabilizers are the same because addition and multiplication both commute. The second expression is the first expression with addition and multiplication switched. You could also check each possibility if you wanted to.
Section 2.3
#12a . It is clear that is not generated by any of its elements (this can be verified easily).
#12b If is cyclic, it is isomorphic to ; Assume this is the case. The element has order but no element in has order . This is a contradiction, and hence they aren't isomorphic.
#12c Assume . Because , we have a contradiction.
#20 If , then divides . Because the only divisors of are powers of , it follows that for some .
#26a Assume . is a homomorphism because , which follows from the fact that is abelian. Due to being finite, surjectivity implies injectivity. Because , for . Let be arbitrary. Then . We know that divides because and Lagrange's Theorem; Thus , and . Therefore, is an automorphism.
Conversely, suppose is an automorphism. Let , and . Then, and . It follows that . Because is an isomorphism, only , implying or . Therefore, .
#26b Assume . This implies that . Thus because (look to #26a for more details). Thus . Conversely, assume . Then , or for all . Because , we have , or equivelently .
#26c Let be an arbitrary automorphism. Let ; Then (remember is the generator). Because is a homomorphism, . Thus for all , and hence .
#26d . Let be the map . Then, is a homomorphism because
By #26a, is an automorphism if and only if . By the previous statement and the fact that , we have . is injective by #26b and surjective by #26c, and thus it is injective. Therefore, is an isomorphism.
Section 2.4
#7 Let , , and ; Then is the subgroup of we are considering. because . We now want to show that and satisfy the generator relations; For starters, clearly . Also . Thus, because satisfies all relations of , the two are isomorphic.
Section 2.5
#2a .
#2b .
#2c .
#2d .
#10 If has an element of order , then must be in ; But , so
Thus assume does not have an element of order . Let . By Lagrange's Theorem, (i.e. all elements in are of order ). Without loss of generality, ; This is because by the group axioms and:
Thus and . By similar reasoning, we can show , , and . Because has the same multiplication table as , we conclude that . Zooming out, there are only two group of order (up to isomorphism): and .
Section 3.1
#9 is a homomorphism:
The image of is because the sum of squares is always positive. is the set of all points that form a circle of radius centered at the origin in the complex plane. The fiber above is the set of all points that forms a circle of radius centered at the origin in the complex plane.
#32 The subgroup is normal in because it is contained in the . Now consider the subgroup . Fix . If , then ; Otherwise, or . Because contains both the positive and negative of each element, we only need to check . Thus . Similar reasoning shows that . Hence, every subgroup of is normal. Now consider the quotient . Because , we have ; Hence . By symmetry, . Finally, ; Because is of order and acyclic, .
#35 Fix and ; Then for some . It's determinant is
Thus , and . Therefore . Now we consider . Each element of is of the form
(i.e. each element is the set of all matrices with determinant ). This suggests that is isomorphic to . Define by . Clearly is well defined. is a homomorphism:
is also surjective because for any , we can find a matrix such that due to the surjectivity of . For , if , then . By the set based definition of and , it follows that , or is injective. Thus is an isomorphism, and
#36 Let . Every coset is of the form . Fix ; Then and . Thus, because commute with , we have
Therefore, is abelian.
#41 Fix and ; Then is of the form
Thus , and . We now consider . If , then because
Therefore, is abelian because for every , we have .
#42 Let and . Because is normal, , and thus . Because is normal, ; Inverting this, we get , and thus . Therefore, , and because , it follows that for and .
Section 3.2
#4 By Lagrange's theorem, divides ; Thus either
- which implies is abelian
- which implies
Only the third case requires consideration. Let . Then , and because is prime, is cyclic. By exercise 3.1.36, this implies that is abelian. The proof for when follows by symmetry.
#8 Because , Lagrange's theorem implies that divides and . But and are relatively prime, so , and thus .
#22 . Because , we have . By Corollary 9, we have which is equivalent to .
#23 We shall first consider . By Euler's theorem, ; Thus , or . This implies that for some positive integer . Now, we consider . By Euler's theorem, . Therefore, . In conclusion, the last two digits of are .
Section 3.3
#3 Because and , the second isomorphism theorem implies that , , and . By Proposition 14, , or and . Because , we have
Because , it follows that ; But is prime, so is or . If , then ; This implies that is equal to or , implying (i). Let . Then , which leads to the conclusion that . The second isomorphism theorem also says that , or
Dividing by , we get .
Section 3.4
#1 Because is abelian every subgroup is normal. Fix a nonidentity element ; Then either or . If , then . Because is proper, this is a contradiction. Thus . If , then is a proper subgroup, a contradiction. Thus . For every divisor of , is proper. Thus the only divisors of are and , rendering prime. Therefore, .
Section 3.5
#3 We shall prove this by induction. Consider case . Then , and the result clearly holds. Consider case . Assume the result holds for . Every element in is the product of transpositions; Thus, we want to show that contains all transpositions on letters. In other words, we want to show where . Fix an element such that . We now condition on and to show that :
- : Result follows from induction hypothesis
- and : Then , and hence generated by it
- and : By 1. and 2., and are generated by . Thus letting , the result follows.
By induction the result holds for , and hence the result is proved.
#10 We claim that the composition series is where (thus ). It isn't difficult to prove that to be a correct normal subgroup hierarchy. , and because is prime, is isomorphic to a simple group of order (namely ). The same holds for (isomorphic to ) and (isomorphic to ). Because all the quotients are isomorphic to an abelian group, they are abelian, and hence is solvable.
Section 4.1
#1 Fix ; Then , and because , it follows that . Hence . Fix ; Then , and because , it follows that . Thus , or , or . Therefore . Assume that acts transitively on . Let be the kernel of this action. We know that the kernel is the intersection of the stabilizers. By the previous result, we know that for an arbitrary , there exists a such that . This means
Section 4.2
#1a Let . Then , , and so on. The same holds for the rest, leaving us with the mapping:
#1b Let . Then , , and so on. The same holds for the rest, leaving us with the mapping:
This is the same subgroup as in part a.
#8 Let act on the set of left cosets of in , and let be the homomorphism defined by . Clearly, is a normal subgroup of . By Theorem 3, , and by Lagrange's theorem,
By the first isomorphism theorem, is isomorphic to a subgroup of . Because , It follows that .
Section 4.3
#5 Fix . Clearly , and thus . By Proposition 6, where is the conjugacy class of . By Lagrange's Theorem, , thus . Thus the same holds for all conjugacy classes, and the theorem is proved.
#21 Assume does not commute with any odd permutation. commutes with every cycle in it's cycle decomposition, so the cycle type of is all odds. Assume that two cycles have the same odd length . Let be their product . If , then because
Because is the product of transpositions and is odd, we have a contradiction. Thus, no two cycles have the same odd length.
Conversely, assume that the cycle type of consists of distinct odd integers. Let commute with : , and express as the product of cycles where . By Proposition 10 it follows that . Thus,
(because the cycle type of consists of distinct odd integers). In other words, commutes with every cycle in . Fix a cycle of . Because commutes with , we know commutes with . Thus . Because commutes with it's powers, , and because , it follows from Proposition 10 that there exist such s; This implies , or . This implies that , or that for all , we have . This implies only commutes with the group generated by the cycles in its cycle decomposition. In other words, only commutes with even permutations, not odd permutations.
Section 4.5
#3 Let the prime factorization of the order of be . Let be a number dividing . Then , and the Sylow- group is of order . Fix a nontrivial element . Then the order of is one of because the order of an element in a group must divide the order of the group; Let where . Then
Thus there exists an element of order in , and hence .
#7 Because , the order of each Sylow 2-subgroup is . By the Third Sylow Theorem, . Thus is either or . Because the following three subgroups are all of order (and hence Sylow 2-subgroups), they make up all Sylow 2-subgroups of :
By conjugating on the generators of using Proposition 4.3.10, we find that and .
#13 . Then, has a Sylow -subgroup of order ; Call it . By the third Sylow Theorem, is or . If , then by Corollary 20, , and we are done. Assume . Because is prime, , and thus has elements of order . All Sylow -subgroups are disjoint (this includes ) because they are cyclic. Thus has elements of order , with leftover spaces. has a Sylow -subgroup of order ; Call it . No element in is of order because . Thus, the leftover spaces in are filled by , and , or .
#29 My hands will commit suicide before I can complete the proof of this statement (but if you had to do one proof from this section, this would be it).
Section 5.1
#1 Let and . The result follows from the (trivial) fact that if and only if for all . A group is abelian if and only if . This means that the expression stated previously, must be equal to . This implies that must equal , or that every group is abelian. If every factor is abelian (i.e. ), then
and hence, is abelian.
#4 Let and . Then . If and , then , and because , we have . This implies
Fix . By the Second Sylow Theorem, there exists an such that
Thus we also have , and that
From this, we also immediately have . The generalized result follows by induction, which we omit here.
#11 There are non identity elements of order in . Each of these generates a cyclic subgroup, so there are cyclic subgroup of order in . Because is prime, each subgroup of order has generators; Thus the number of cyclic subgroups of order is . Because all subgroups of order must be cyclic (by Lagrange's theorem), there aren't any we haven't counted.
Section 5.2
#1a There are abelian groups of order
#1b There are abelian groups of order
#1c There is abelian group of order
#1d There are abelian groups of order
#1e There are abelian groups of order
Section 5.4
#2
#4 The proper normal subgroups of are and . which is not abelian; On the other hand which is abelian. Thus . The only normal subgroup of is . Because which is abelian, .
#5
Lemma: is the only proper subgroup of for .
Proof: Let be proper. By the Diamond Isomorphism Theorem and the fact that , we have . Because is simple, . This means . Because is proper, we have .
By the lemma, is the only normal subgroup of in this case. Beacuse , we have for all .
Section 7.1
#6a,b Yes
#6c No
#6d Let for and for . Similarly, let for and for . Clearly and have an infinite number of zeros. Then for all , and hence doesn't have a finite number of zeros.
#6e Yes, by the limit laws.
#6f By the trigonometric identities, yes.
#14a If , then ; Assume . Letting , we have by the fact that is nilpotent. Thus is a zero divisor for .
#14b Because is a commutative ring, . Thus is nilpotent.
#14c Let and where (remember is nilpotent). If is odd, then ; Otherwise, if is even, then . In any case, because , we have , and hence, is a unit of .
#14d Fix a unit element . By #14b, is nilpotent, and by #14c, is a unit. Then, is a unit.
#23 Clearly, , and is closed under subtraction. Fix ; Then and . Hence,
Thus is closed under multiplication, and is a subring of .
#25a You can check this by straightforward (albeit tedious) multiplication.
#25b because is an integer.
#25c Let be an element such that . Then we have if and only if if and only if one of is (while the rest are zero) if and only if if and only if is a unit. The relations of the group of units of the Hamiltonian quaternions (which is )are the same as that of the quaternions group of order . Because they also have the same size, .
Section 7.2
#3a Assuming you've proved it's a ring (simple, but tedious), we can clearly see multiplication is commutative:
and hence is a commutative ring. If and for , then ; This is the identity element in .
#3b Multiplying them out we get
#3c Assume is a unit in . Then for some , we have
This implies for , and . This implies is a unit with inverse . Assume is a unit. We wish to define such that for . Solving for , this recursively implies that
Therefore, we have constructed an inverse.
#13a First we show (or alternatively, ). Because is the sum of the conjugacy class , and conjugation by a single element permutes , we have
Fix so that for . Then,
Thus, is in the center of .
#13b Assume . Fix such that . Then
Thus . That aside, now assume such that where ; Summing up to may seem artificial, but it is completely normal noting that the coefficients can be . Fix (where , so that the coefficient of in is ). Then, because is in the center of , we have , or
Thus, all conjugates share the same coefficient, and because we are summing up to , the result is proved.
Section 7.3
#13 It is easily checked that defined by
is a bijective ring homomorphism (and hence an isomorphism).
#24a First, we show is a subring of of . Fix an element . Then , which implies that . Because is a homomorphism, this implies , or . Because each element and their inverses are in , it follows that is a group. Thus, we have shown is a subgroup of . To show it is a subring, we must show it is closed under multiplication. Fix elements . Then . Because is a homomorphism, this implies , or . Thus, is a subring of .
Next, we want to show that is not only a subring of , but an ideal too. Fix an element , and . Then , or because is an ideal. Therefore, . Because , it follows that . We have shown that is a left-ideal of . An analogous proof exists to show it to be a right-ideal, thus proving to be an ideal of .
Using what we proved in the previous few paragraphs, is an ideal of . Because is an inclusion homomorphism , and thus we have to be an ideal of .
#24b Clearly is a subgroup of (because and is a group homomorphism). Fix ; We want to show . Because is surjective, there exists an such that . Thus, because is an ideal in ,
This implies that is closed under multiplication (and hence a subring) and is ideal in .
#29 Fix such that . Clearly . We now expand using the binomial theorem:
We see that the power of is always greater than or the power of is always greater than ; Thus , and . Because is a commutative ring, , and we have that . Therefore, is a subring of . If , then , and . This implies that , or . Hence, is an ideal of , and we are done.
Section 7.4
#10 Suppose is a zero divisor. Then, there exists a such that . Because is a prime ideal, either or , contradicting the fact that has no zero divisors.
#15a If , then . We know that , so possible values for are . Because and are from the same coset, the four elements in are .
#15b Addition table for (visually isomorphic to ):
#15c Multiplication table for (visually isomorphic to ):
is commutative, so is a commutative ring with . We also have . This is the definition of a field (and hence the result).
Section 8.1
#1c Their gcd is :
#2c They are relatively prime:
To find the inverse, we wish to solve ; Put another way, we want to solve . Solving this, we find .
#3 Let denote an element of norm (where is a as defined in the problem). Then . Because , we have , or . Thus is a unit with inverse . Now for the second statement. If , but , then by the proof above, is a unit.
#10 Because every ideal in is principal, we have for some . Fix where is a representative for . Because we have where , by the definition of the norm in a Euclidean domain, we know that . But , must also be in because . Thus, we have shown that every coset in can be represented by an element of norm less than . Because there are only finitely amount such that , has finitely many elements.
#12 We start of by noting . Then, by Euler's theorem, we have the desired result:
Section 8.2
#1 Assume ideals and are comaximal in ring . That is, . This implies for every . By Bézout's identity, all possible values of are multiples of the gcd of and . Because can be any value in , it follows that and are coprime. The proof of the converse if analogous (in the reverse direction).
Section 8.3
#2 I think its clear that the lcm exists. Define
Clearly, , and is the smallest such number.