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 .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the year 2 of the natural sciences course of the University of Cambridge 2001 Paper 2 8 Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
Cosets and Lagrange. A left coset is . The left cosets of a subgroup partition a group, each with elements. Lagrange's theorem states for a finite group, so every subgroup order divides the group order.
The 64-element group. Work in the commutative ring , which has zero divisors. Denote the displayed lower triangular matrix by , where are its three entries below the diagonal. Direct matrix multiplication givesAll arithmetic is modulo four, so the set is closed. Associativity comes from matrix multiplication, the identity element is , andThe formula works in either multiplication order and requires no division. Hence these matrices form a group of order . This is the lower triangular version of the Heisenberg group over a commutative ring.
The abelian subgroup. If , write . ThenThe identity is and the inverse is , proving an abelian subgroup. Its two independent entries give and , in accordance with Lagrange's theorem. This is the abelian plane subgroup of the Heisenberg group modulo four.
More explicitly, is a surjective group homomorphism to the additive group of , with kernel . The four left cosets are exactly the four sets with fixed , ; representatives are . Thus is also a normal subgroup.
Matrices squaring to the identity. The product formula givesThe first and third coordinates vanish only when . Then modulo four, so the middle coordinate vanishes exactly when . Therefore the complete set isIt is a subgroup: multiplying two such elements keeps all three entries even, and their cross term vanishes modulo four, so the product simply adds the three even coordinates. The identity is included and each element is its own inverse. In fact is isomorphic to the direct product of groups . The seven nonidentity elements are involutions.
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.