Classical Group - Classical Groups Over General Fields or Rings

Classical Groups Over General Fields or Rings

Classical groups, more broadly considered in algebra, provide particularly interesting matrix groups. When the ring of coefficients of the matrix group is the real number or complex number field, these groups are just certain of the classical Lie groups.

When the underlying ring is a finite field the classical groups are groups of Lie type. These groups play an important role in the classification of finite simple groups. Considering their abstract group theory, many linear groups have a "special" subgroup, usually consisting of the elements of determinant 1 (for orthogonal groups in characteristic 2 it consists of the elements of Dickson invariant 0), and most of them have associated "projective" quotients, which are the quotients by the center of the group.

The word "general" in front of a group name usually means that the group is allowed to multiply some sort of form by a constant, rather than leaving it fixed. The subscript n usually indicates the dimension of the module on which the group is acting. Caveat: this notation clashes somewhat with the n of Dynkin diagrams, which is the rank.

Read more about this topic:  Classical Group

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