Topic summary

Commutator subgroup

Commutator subgroup

In mathematics, more specifically in abstract algebra, the commutator subgroup or derived subgroup of a group is the subgroupgenerated by all the commutators of the group.

The commutator subgroup is important because it is the smallestnormal subgroup such that the quotient group of the original group by this subgroup is abelian. In other words, is abelian if and only if contains the commutator subgroup of . So in some sense it provides a measure of how far the group is from being abelian; the larger the commutator subgroup is, the "less abelian" the group is.