Cyclic Groups
The nth roots of unity form under multiplication a cyclic group of order n, and in fact these groups comprise all of the finite subgroups of the multiplicative group of the complex number field. A generator for this cyclic group is a primitive nth root of unity.
The nth roots of unity form an irreducible representation of any cyclic group of order n. The orthogonality relationship also follows from group-theoretic principles as described in character group.
The roots of unity appear as entries of the eigenvectors of any circulant matrix, i.e. matrices that are invariant under cyclic shifts, a fact that also follows from group representation theory as a variant of Bloch's theorem. In particular, if a circulant Hermitian matrix is considered (for example, a discretized one-dimensional Laplacian with periodic boundaries), the orthogonality property immediately follows from the usual orthogonality of eigenvectors of Hermitian matrices.
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