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The Klein four-group (after the name Vierergruppe introduced by Felix Klein for it in his Vorlesungen über das Ikosaeder und die Auflösung der Gleichungen vom fünften Grade in 1884) is the (multiplicative) group
, the direct product of two copies of the cyclic group of order 2.
It can be defined on the set endowed with the multiplication given by
and
. Its Cayley table is
Another description is that is it the multiplicative group of reduces residues modulo 8:
It is smallest non-cyclic group, and it is Abelian.
Klein four group is the symmetry group of a rhombus (or of a rectangle, or of a planar ellipse), with the four elements being the identity, the vertical reflection, the horizontal reflection, and a 180 degree rotation.
It is also the automorphism group of the graph with four vertices and two disjoint edges.
It can be also defined through permutations on a 4-element set :
(34),
, and
.
Since the generators can be represented as the product of two even permutations
,
is a normal subgroup of the symmetric group
., and consequently also of the alternating group
.
has three genuine subgroups or order 2:
,
, and
. We also have the composition series
,
.
The factors of the series are cyclic of order 2,3,2,2.
Klein four group is actually the dihedral group .
Cite this web-page as:
Štefan Porubský: Klein Four Group.