centralizer
Let be a group. The centralizer of an element is defined to be the set
Observe that, by definition, , and that if , then , so that . Thus is a subgroup of . For , the subgroup is non-trivial, containing at least .
To illustrate an application of this concept we prove the following lemma.
Lemma:
There exists a bijection between the right cosets of and the conjugates
of .
Proof:
If are in the same right coset, then for some . Thus .Conversely, if then and giving are in the same right coset.Let denote the conjugacy class of . It follows that and .
We remark that , where denotes the center of .
Now let be a -group, i.e. a finite group of order ,where is a prime and is a positive integer.Let .Summing over elements in distinct conjugacy classes,we have since the center consists precisely of the conjugacy classes ofcardinality .But , so .However, is certainly non-empty, so we conclude that every-group has a non-trivial center.
The groups and , for any , are isomorphic.