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Automorphisms
In mathematics, an automorphism is an isomorphism from a mathematical object to itself. It is, in some sense, a symmetry of the object, and a way of mapping the object to itself while preserving all of its structure. The set of all automorphisms of an object forms a group, called the automorphism group. It is, loosely speaking, the symmetry group of the object. Definition In the context of abstract algebra, a mathematical object is an algebraic structure such as a group, ring, or vector space. An automorphism is simply a bijective homomorphism of an object with itself. (The definition of a homomorphism depends on the type of algebraic structure; see, for example, group homomorphism, ring homomorphism, and linear operator.) The identity morphism (identity mapping) is called the trivial automorphism in some contexts. Respectively, other (non-identity) automorphisms are called nontrivial automorphisms. The exact definition of an automorphism depends on the type of "mathematical ob ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Endomorphism
In mathematics, an endomorphism is a morphism from a mathematical object to itself. An endomorphism that is also an isomorphism is an automorphism. For example, an endomorphism of a vector space is a linear map , and an endomorphism of a group is a group homomorphism . In general, we can talk about endomorphisms in any category. In the category of sets, endomorphisms are functions from a set ''S'' to itself. In any category, the composition of any two endomorphisms of is again an endomorphism of . It follows that the set of all endomorphisms of forms a monoid, the full transformation monoid, and denoted (or to emphasize the category ). Automorphisms An invertible endomorphism of is called an automorphism. The set of all automorphisms is a subset of with a group structure, called the automorphism group of and denoted . In the following diagram, the arrows denote implication: Endomorphism rings Any two endomorphisms of an abelian group, , can be added toge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ring Homomorphism
In ring theory, a branch of abstract algebra, a ring homomorphism is a structure-preserving function between two rings. More explicitly, if ''R'' and ''S'' are rings, then a ring homomorphism is a function such that ''f'' is: :addition preserving: ::f(a+b)=f(a)+f(b) for all ''a'' and ''b'' in ''R'', :multiplication preserving: ::f(ab)=f(a)f(b) for all ''a'' and ''b'' in ''R'', :and unit (multiplicative identity) preserving: ::f(1_R)=1_S. Additive inverses and the additive identity are part of the structure too, but it is not necessary to require explicitly that they too are respected, because these conditions are consequences of the three conditions above. If in addition ''f'' is a bijection, then its inverse ''f''−1 is also a ring homomorphism. In this case, ''f'' is called a ring isomorphism, and the rings ''R'' and ''S'' are called ''isomorphic''. From the standpoint of ring theory, isomorphic rings cannot be distinguished. If ''R'' and ''S'' are rngs, then the cor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 such as groups and rings. The term ''identity element'' is often shortened to ''identity'' (as in the case of additive identity and multiplicative identity) when there is no possibility of confusion, but the identity implicitly depends on the binary operation it is associated with. Definitions Let be a set equipped with a binary operation ∗. Then an element of is called a if for all in , and a if for all in . If is both a left identity and a right identity, then it is called a , or simply an . An identity with respect to addition is called an (often denoted as 0) and an identity with respect to multiplication is called a (often denoted as 1). These need not be ordinary additi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Category (mathematics)
In mathematics, a category (sometimes called an abstract category to distinguish it from a concrete category) is a collection of "objects" that are linked by "arrows". A category has two basic properties: the ability to compose the arrows associatively and the existence of an identity arrow for each object. A simple example is the category of sets, whose objects are sets and whose arrows are functions. '' Category theory'' is a branch of mathematics that seeks to generalize all of mathematics in terms of categories, independent of what their objects and arrows represent. Virtually every branch of modern mathematics can be described in terms of categories, and doing so often reveals deep insights and similarities between seemingly different areas of mathematics. As such, category theory provides an alternative foundation for mathematics to set theory and other proposed axiomatic foundations. In general, the objects and arrows may be abstract entities of any kind, and the n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Associativity
In mathematics, the associative property is a property of some binary operations, which means that rearranging the parentheses in an expression will not change the result. In propositional logic, associativity is a valid rule of replacement for expressions in logical proofs. Within an expression containing two or more occurrences in a row of the same associative operator, the order in which the operations are performed does not matter as long as the sequence of the operands is not changed. That is (after rewriting the expression with parentheses and in infix notation if necessary), rearranging the parentheses in such an expression will not change its value. Consider the following equations: \begin (2 + 3) + 4 &= 2 + (3 + 4) = 9 \,\\ 2 \times (3 \times 4) &= (2 \times 3) \times 4 = 24 . \end Even though the parentheses were rearranged on each line, the values of the expressions were not altered. Since this holds true when performing addition and multiplication on any real ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Closure (binary Operation)
In mathematics, a subset of a given set is closed under an operation of the larger set if performing that operation on members of the subset always produces a member of that subset. For example, the natural numbers are closed under addition, but not under subtraction: is not a natural number, although both 1 and 2 are. Similarly, a subset is said to be closed under a ''collection'' of operations if it is closed under each of the operations individually. The closure of a subset is the result of a closure operator applied to the subset. The ''closure'' of a subset under some operations is the smallest subset that is closed under these operations. It is often called the ''span'' (for example linear span) or the ''generated set''. Definitions Let be a set equipped with one or several methods for producing elements of from other elements of . Operations and (partial) multivariate function are examples of such methods. If is a topological space, the limit of a sequence of elements ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Function Composition
In mathematics, function composition is an operation that takes two functions and , and produces a function such that . In this operation, the function is applied to the result of applying the function to . That is, the functions and are composed to yield a function that maps in domain to in codomain . Intuitively, if is a function of , and is a function of , then is a function of . The resulting ''composite'' function is denoted , defined by for all in . The notation is read as " of ", " after ", " circle ", " round ", " about ", " composed with ", " following ", " then ", or " on ", or "the composition of and ". Intuitively, composing functions is a chaining process in which the output of function feeds the input of function . The composition of functions is a special case of the composition of relations, sometimes also denoted by \circ. As a result, all properties of composition of relations are true of composition of functions, such as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Class (set Theory)
In set theory and its applications throughout mathematics, a class is a collection of sets (or sometimes other mathematical objects) that can be unambiguously defined by a property that all its members share. Classes act as a way to have set-like collections while differing from sets so as to avoid Russell's paradox (see ). The precise definition of "class" depends on foundational context. In work on Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, the notion of class is informal, whereas other set theories, such as von Neumann–Bernays–Gödel set theory, axiomatize the notion of "proper class", e.g., as entities that are not members of another entity. A class that is not a set (informally in Zermelo–Fraenkel) is called a proper class, and a class that is a set is sometimes called a small class. For instance, the class of all ordinal numbers, and the class of all sets, are proper classes in many formal systems. In Quine's set-theoretical writing, the phrase "ultimate class" is often used in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Function (mathematics)
In mathematics, a function from a set to a set assigns to each element of exactly one element of .; the words map, mapping, transformation, correspondence, and operator are often used synonymously. The set is called the domain of the function and the set is called the codomain of the function.Codomain ''Encyclopedia of Mathematics'Codomain. ''Encyclopedia of Mathematics''/ref> The earliest known approach to the notion of function can be traced back to works of Persian mathematicians Al-Biruni and Sharaf al-Din al-Tusi. Functions were originally the idealization of how a varying quantity depends on another quantity. For example, the position of a planet is a ''function'' of time. Historically, the concept was elaborated with the infinitesimal calculus at the end of the 17th century, and, until the 19th century, the functions that were considered were differentiable (that is, they had a high degree of regularity). The concept of a function was formalized at the end of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Morphism
In mathematics, particularly in category theory, a morphism is a structure-preserving map from one mathematical structure to another one of the same type. The notion of morphism recurs in much of contemporary mathematics. In set theory, morphisms are functions; in linear algebra, linear transformations; in group theory, group homomorphisms; in topology, continuous functions, and so on. In category theory, ''morphism'' is a broadly similar idea: the mathematical objects involved need not be sets, and the relationships between them may be something other than maps, although the morphisms between the objects of a given category have to behave similarly to maps in that they have to admit an associative operation similar to function composition. A morphism in category theory is an abstraction of a homomorphism. The study of morphisms and of the structures (called "objects") over which they are defined is central to category theory. Much of the terminology of morphisms, as well as the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Category Theory
Category theory is a general theory of mathematical structures and their relations that was introduced by Samuel Eilenberg and Saunders Mac Lane in the middle of the 20th century in their foundational work on algebraic topology. Nowadays, category theory is used in almost all areas of mathematics, and in some areas of computer science. In particular, many constructions of new mathematical objects from previous ones, that appear similarly in several contexts are conveniently expressed and unified in terms of categories. Examples include quotient spaces, direct products, completion, and duality. A category is formed by two sorts of objects: the objects of the category, and the morphisms, which relate two objects called the ''source'' and the ''target'' of the morphism. One often says that a morphism is an ''arrow'' that ''maps'' its source to its target. Morphisms can be ''composed'' if the target of the first morphism equals the source of the second one, and morphism compos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
