A nontrivial normal subgroup of a finite p-group meets the center of a group nontrivially. The conjugation action of on has singleton orbits exactly at . The orbit-stabilizer theorem makes every other orbit size divisible by , so . Since the intersection contains the identity, its size is at least .
Centralizer Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
The centralizer of is the stabilizer of under the conjugation action:
Conjugacy class Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-24
The conjugacy class of is its orbit under the conjugation action:
The group ring becomes a -module under the conjugation action . Its basis splits into conjugacy classes, and the span of the class of is the permutation module on .
Normalizer Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
The normalizer is the stabilizer of a subgroup under the conjugation action.
The conjugacy class of is its orbit under the conjugation action, and its stabilizer is the centralizer . The orbit-stabilizer theorem gives
By Lagrange's theorem, the order of the centralizer divides , so the index is a power of . A conjugacy class has size one exactly when its element belongs to the center of a group.
Separate these singleton classes in the class equation:
where the sum takes one representative of each nonsingleton conjugacy class. Every summand is divisible by . Thus , and the identity ensures . Consequently . This is the nontrivial center of a finite p-group property.
The identity belongs to the center of a group. If commute with every , then does too; rearranging also shows that commutes with . Hence is a subgroup. Moreover for , so it is a normal subgroup.
Suppose . The conjugation action partitions into conjugacy classes. The orbit-stabilizer theorem gives class size , where is the centralizer of . By Lagrange's theorem, this size is a power of ; it is one exactly when is central. Thus the class equation has the form
It follows that . Since the identity is central, , and therefore
This is the nontrivial-centre property of a finite p-group.
For a group action of a finite group on a set and a point , the orbit-stabilizer theorem is
where is the stabilizer subgroup. The map is well defined because elements of the same coset act identically on . If , then , so their cosets agree; every orbit point has the form , giving surjectivity. This is a bijection. Lagrange's theorem, for any subgroup , yields the counting formula.
Apply the conjugation action of the finite p-group to its nontrivial normal subgroup . Normality ensures the action stays inside . The singleton orbits of a group action are exactly the elements of . Every larger orbit of a group action has size a positive power of , by the orbit-stabilizer theorem and Lagrange's theorem. Therefore
Since is nontrivial, its order is divisible by . The intersection contains the identity and has cardinality a positive multiple of , so it contains a nonidentity element. This proves the central intersection property of normal subgroups of finite p-groups.
For the proper subgroup , let act by left multiplication on the left cosets . A coset is fixed by every exactly when . Both groups have the same finite size, so this inclusion is equality; the fixed cosets are precisely those with . Hence their number is . All non-singleton orbits of a group action have size divisible by , so
Since is proper, is a positive power of greater than one. The fixed-coset count is nonzero, because itself is fixed, and is divisible by . Therefore the normalizer strictly contains :
This is the normalizer condition for finite p-groups. The proof also covers , whose action fixes all cosets.
The normalizer of in is
It is the stabilizer of the subgroup under the conjugation action of on its subgroups.
A group action of on is a map such that and . The orbit and stabilizer of are
For a finite group, the map
is a well-defined bijection from the left cosets of to . Each coset has elements, so the orbit-stabilizer theorem is
The Cauchy theorem for groups says that if a prime number divides , then has an element of order . To prove it, let
The first entries determine the last, so , which is divisible by . The cyclic group acts on by cyclically rotating the entries; rotation preserves the product condition because
Every orbit has size one or . The fixed points are exactly the tuples with . Their number is therefore divisible by . Since the identity gives one fixed point, there is another, and its entry has order .
Now let . Cauchy's theorem gives a subgroup of order . Let act by the conjugation action on the set of subgroups of order . It fixes . If it also fixed , then would normalize ; since , the product would be a subgroup of order , which is impossible. Every other -orbit in therefore has size , so
Distinct members of share only the identity and each contributes ten nonidentity elements. Hence , forcing . Thus is a normal subgroup.
Conjugation now defines a group homomorphism
Because , its automorphism group has order . By the Lagrange theorem, the image has order dividing both and , so the image is trivial and lies in the center of . Cauchy's theorem also supplies of order . If generates , then and commute and has order . Therefore
For , the square-zero ideal condition gives
Thus the square-zero unit subgroup is abelian, and
is a group isomorphism from the additive group of .
Use the specified ring isomorphism . For , choose a lift and define for . Two lifts differ by an element of , whose product with vanishes, so this is well defined. Right multiplication is handled identically. The two actions commute by associativity, making a bimodule. If lifts , then is a unit: a lift of makes both and elements of , hence units, and a ring element with both a left and a right inverse is invertible. Conjugation therefore defines
Changing by an element of does not change this expression because . Moreover,
so is an isomorphism of -modules for these conjugation actions.
Let be reduction on unit groups, and define as the inverse image of the distinguished subgroup . Every has a unit lift by the preceding argument, and the kernel consists exactly of the units congruent to , namely . Multiplication in therefore gives the group extension
Choose a set-theoretic section with . Its extension cocycle
satisfies the two-cocycle identity by associativity. A different section changes by a group coboundary, so second group cohomology classifies group extensions gives a well-defined class
The same construction for gives , an extension cocycle , and .
The answer to the final question is no. An abstract ring isomorphism need not carry the distinguished ideal to , need not induce the identity under the two chosen identifications of the quotient rings with , and need not induce the prescribed -module isomorphism . Hence it need not give an isomorphism of the two displayed group extensions, so it imposes no equality . That equality does hold if the ring isomorphism has all three compatibility properties, because it then carries one extension cocycle to the other up to a group coboundary.