Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2016 ia Paper 3 5D ii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-06
An example is the unitriangular group of degree three over F3, consisting ofThis is an upper unitriangular group of order . Direct matrix multiplication givesThe formula gives closure, identity , and inverse ; associativity follows from matrix multiplication. The two elements and do not commute: their products have respectively and .
Every element has the form with . Since the finite field has characteristic three, the binomial expansion givesHence every nonidentity element has order exactly three. This is a nonabelian finite group with exponent of a finite group equal to three.
The given unitriangular group of degree three over F3 has elements, just as does, so counting alone cannot distinguish them. Instead compare element orders.
Write an element as , with strictly upper triangular of size . Then . Over the finite field , the binomial theorem for commuting matrices givesEvery nonidentity element of consequently has element order . In contrast, has element order , by part (b). An isomorphism preserves element order, soEquivalently, the exponent of a finite group is for and for .