Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 4 5 iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
No prime and no presentation of have p-deficiency at least one. Set . The relations giveEvery element has form or with . Conversely, the usual rotations and reflections of a regular -gon satisfy the presentation and give distinct elements. Hence is the finite dihedral group of order . The criterion p-deficiency at least one implies infinitude excludes every alternative presentation and every prime. As a check, the given presentation has
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 4 5 Solution 2026-10-06
For a group presentation with finite, let be its free group. For a nontrivial relator defineThe p-deficiency in the unshifted convention used here isIf the weighted sum diverges the value is ; identity relators may be omitted or assigned weight zero. Roots are taken in the free group, not in the presented quotient. Some authors subtract one from this definition; here the requested threshold is .
Two elementary bounds explain why p-deficiency detects infinitude. The p-rank of a group isHere denotes the subgroup generated by all th powers. Each relator that is not a th power imposes at most one linear relation in this vector space, and a th-power relator imposes none. If there are relators of the first type, then
The second bound is the index-p rewriting bound for p-deficiency. Suppose has index , and its preimage in is . The Nielsen–Schreier formula gives rank . For a relator , there are two cases in the Reidemeister–Schreier theorem. If , its coset-conjugates are all th powers in , with total weight at most . If , then , since . Its cosets generate , so representatives show that the rewritten conjugates of are redundant up to conjugation in . One relator suffices, and has weight at most . In both cases the total weight is at most times the old weight. Thus the induced group presentation of satisfiesThe argument applies termwise to infinitely many relators whenever the weighted sum converges.
If , the p-rank of a group bound gives a surjection to , hence a normal subgroup of index . The rewriting bound gives that subgroup another presentation of p-deficiency at least one. Iterating produces subgroups of index for every . p-deficiency at least one implies infinitude.
Now enumerate the nonidentity elements of and choose the presentationIts p-deficiency obeysThe infinitude criterion shows that is infinite. It is generated by two elements, and every element is represented by some or is the identity; the imposed relation makes its order a power of . Thus . This is a torsion group construction by p-power relators; the presentation intentionally has infinitely many relators.
p-deficiency 2026-10-06
For a group presentation with finitely many generators and a prime number , defineThis uses the unshifted convention. Identity relators have zero weight, and a divergent sum gives value . Some literature subtracts one instead; inequalities must be shifted accordingly. Taking roots in the free group matters: roots appearing only after passing to the quotient do not change the relator weight. The p-rank of a group bounds this quantity above, and the index-p rewriting bound for p-deficiency gives the infinitude criterion p-deficiency at least one implies infinitude.
Enumerate all nonidentity words in the rank-two free group and impose relations . The resulting two-generated group hasIt is infinite by p-deficiency at least one implies infinitude. Each element has order a power of , so it is a torsion group. The infinitely many relators are essential to this particular construction; finite generation does not imply a finite group presentation.