Alternating Group - Automorphism Group

Automorphism Group

For more details on this topic, see Automorphisms of the symmetric and alternating groups.

For n > 3, except for n = 6, the automorphism group of An is the symmetric group Sn, with inner automorphism group An and outer automorphism group Z2; the outer automorphism comes from conjugation by an odd permutation.

For n = 1 and 2, the automorphism group is trivial. For n = 3 the automorphism group is Z2, with trivial inner automorphism group and outer automorphism group Z2.

The outer automorphism group of A6 is the Klein four-group V = Z2 × Z2, and is related to the outer automorphism of S6. The extra outer automorphism in A6 swaps the 3-cycles (like (123)) with elements of shape 32 (like (123)(456)).

Read more about this topic:  Alternating Group

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