TheoremBase

The Order of an Element of a Group

An element of a group has finite order if some positive power of it is the identity, and its order is then the least such exponent; otherwise it has infinite order.

Statement

In the setting of Routine Facts, Continued: Typed Arithmetic, Maps and Predicativity, let (G,⋅)(G,\cdot) be a group, let ee be its identity element, unique by Uniqueness of the Identity Element and of Inverses in a Group (i), let hnh^{n}, for h∈Gh\in G and n∈Zn\in\mathbb{Z}, be the integer power, and let g∈Gg\in G.

Order of an element. gg has finite order if gn=eg^{n}=e for some n∈Nn\in\mathbb{N}, and then the order of gg is the least such nn (it exists and is unique by Arithmetic and Order of the Natural Numbers (xv) and Bounds, Least and Greatest Elements, Suprema and Infima for a Partial Order (iii)),

ord⁡(g)=min⁡{n∈N:gn=e}.\operatorname{ord}(g)=\min\{n\in\mathbb{N}:g^{n}=e\}.

Otherwise gg has infinite order.

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