In the Heisenberg group over a commutative ring with , the subset is an Abelian subgroup of group order 16. Its product has central coordinate , symmetric in the two factors. Its inverse element is . The map is a surjective group homomorphism to the additive group of , with kernel of a group homomorphism . Thus is a normal subgroup and has four cosets in the 64-element group.
Unlike the odd-prime case, division by two is unavailable. In fact take and . Then , where the binomial coefficient is computed as an integer before reduction modulo four. Hence and has element order eight. The element has element order two and is not a power of : the powers with outer coordinates two have central coordinates one or three. Their generated subgroups intersect trivially, so the 16-element Abelian group is the direct product of groups .
Perform the product and inverse formulas from part (b) in the commutative ring . They involve only addition, multiplication and negatives, so closure and inverses remain valid; no division by a nonunit is needed. Associativity again comes from matrix multiplication, and remains the identity. The Heisenberg group over a commutative ring therefore hasThese are residues modulo four, not arithmetic in the finite field of four elements.
For the additional subgroup task, write an element of as . Its product and inverse areBoth remain in , and the product is unchanged on exchanging the factors because . The identity is included, so is an Abelian subgroup. There are four independent choices each for , givingThus there are four distinct left cosets. Explicitly the surjective group homomorphism has kernel ; the four cosets are the level sets of that difference, with representatives , . This is the Abelian plane subgroup of the Heisenberg group modulo four.