Extensions in General
One extension, the direct product, is immediately obvious. If one requires G and Q to be abelian groups, then the set of isomorphism classes of extensions of Q by a given (abelian) group N is in fact a group, which is isomorphic to
- ;
cf. the Ext functor. Several other general classes of extensions are known but no theory exists which treats all the possible extensions at one time. Group extension is usually described as a hard problem; it is termed the extension problem.
To consider some examples, if G = H × K, then G is an extension of both H and K. More generally, if G is a semidirect product of K and H, then G is an extension of H by K, so such products as the wreath product provide further examples of extensions.
Read more about this topic: Group Extension
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