In mathematics, a

group A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together. Groups of people * Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity * Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic ide ...

is said to be complete if every automorphism of is inner, and it is centerless; that is, it has a trivial

outer automorphism group In mathematics, the outer automorphism group of a group, , is the quotient, , where is the automorphism group of and ) is the subgroup consisting of inner automorphisms. The outer automorphism group is usually denoted . If is trivial and has a t ...

and trivial

center Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentrici ...

. Equivalently, a group is complete if the

conjugation Conjugation or conjugate may refer to: Linguistics * Grammatical conjugation, the modification of a verb from its basic form * Emotive conjugation or Russell's conjugation, the use of loaded language Mathematics * Complex conjugation, the chang ...

map, (sending an element to conjugation by ), is an

isomorphism In mathematics, an isomorphism is a structure-preserving mapping between two structures of the same type that can be reversed by an inverse mapping. Two mathematical structures are isomorphic if an isomorphism exists between them. The word i ...

injectivity In mathematics, an injective function (also known as injection, or one-to-one function) is a function that maps distinct elements of its domain to distinct elements; that is, implies . (Equivalently, implies in the equivalent contrapositi ...

implies that only conjugation by the

identity element In mathematics, an identity element, or neutral element, of a binary operation operating on a set is an element of the set that leaves unchanged every element of the set when the operation is applied. This concept is used in algebraic structures su ...

is the identity automorphism, meaning the group is centerless, while surjectivity implies it has no outer automorphisms.

Examples

As an example, all the

symmetric group In abstract algebra, the symmetric group defined over any set is the group whose elements are all the bijections from the set to itself, and whose group operation is the composition of functions. In particular, the finite symmetric group ...

s, , are complete except when . For the case , the group has a non-trivial center, while for the case , there is an

outer automorphism In mathematics, the outer automorphism group of a group, , is the quotient, , where is the automorphism group of and ) is the subgroup consisting of inner automorphisms. The outer automorphism group is usually denoted . If is trivial and has a t ...

. The automorphism group of a

simple group SIMPLE Group Limited is a conglomeration of separately run companies that each has its core area in International Consulting. The core business areas are Legal Services, Fiduciary Activities, Banking Intermediation and Corporate Service. The d ...

is an

almost simple group In mathematics, a group is said to be almost simple if it contains a non-abelian simple group and is contained within the automorphism group of that simple group – that is, if it fits between a (non-abelian) simple group and its automorphism group ...

; for a non- abelian simple group , the automorphism group of is complete.

Properties

A complete group is always isomorphic to its

automorphism group In mathematics, the automorphism group of an object ''X'' is the group consisting of automorphisms of ''X'' under composition of morphisms. For example, if ''X'' is a finite-dimensional vector space, then the automorphism group of ''X'' is the g ...

(via sending an element to conjugation by that element), although the converse need not hold: for example, the

dihedral group In mathematics, a dihedral group is the group of symmetries of a regular polygon, which includes rotations and reflections. Dihedral groups are among the simplest examples of finite groups, and they play an important role in group theory, ...

of 8 elements is isomorphic to its automorphism group, but it is not complete. For a discussion, see .

Extensions of complete groups

Assume that a group is a group extension given as a

short exact sequence An exact sequence is a sequence of morphisms between objects (for example, groups, rings, modules, and, more generally, objects of an abelian category) such that the image of one morphism equals the kernel of the next. Definition In the context ...

of groups : with

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learn ...

, , and quotient, . If the kernel, , is a complete group then the extension splits: is isomorphic to the direct product, . A proof using

homomorphism In algebra, a homomorphism is a structure-preserving map between two algebraic structures of the same type (such as two groups, two rings, or two vector spaces). The word ''homomorphism'' comes from the Ancient Greek language: () meaning "same" ...

s and exact sequences can be given in a natural way: The action of (by

) on the normal subgroup, , gives rise to a group homomorphism, . Since and has trivial center the homomorphism is surjective and has an obvious section given by the inclusion of in . The kernel of is the

centralizer In mathematics, especially group theory, the centralizer (also called commutant) of a subset ''S'' in a group ''G'' is the set of elements \mathrm_G(S) of ''G'' such that each member g \in \mathrm_G(S) commutes with each element of ''S'', ...

of in , and so is at least a semidirect product, , but the action of on is trivial, and so the product is direct. This can be restated in terms of elements and internal conditions: If is a normal, complete

subgroup In group theory, a branch of mathematics, given a group ''G'' under a binary operation ∗, a subset ''H'' of ''G'' is called a subgroup of ''G'' if ''H'' also forms a group under the operation ∗. More precisely, ''H'' is a subgroup ...

of a group , then is a direct product. The proof follows directly from the definition: is centerless giving is trivial. If is an element of then it induces an automorphism of by conjugation, but and this conjugation must be equal to conjugation by some element of . Then conjugation by is the identity on and so is in and every element, , of is a product in .

References

* * {{Citation , last1=Rotman , first1=Joseph J. , title=An introduction to the theory of groups , publisher=

Springer-Verlag Springer Science+Business Media, commonly known as Springer, is a German multinational publishing company of books, e-books and peer-reviewed journals in science, humanities, technical and medical (STM) publishing. Originally founded in 1842 ...

, location=Berlin, New York , isbn=978-0-387-94285-8 , year=1994 (chapter 7, in particular theorems 7.15 and 7.17).

External links

* Joel David Hamkins
How tall is the automorphism tower of a group?
Properties of groups