Word (group Theory) - Definition

Definition

Let G be a group, and let S be a subset of G. A word in S is any expression of the form

where s1,...,sn are elements of S and each εi is ±1. The number n is known as the length of the word.

Each word in S represents an element of G, namely the product of the expression. By convention, the identity element can be represented by the empty word, which is the unique word of length zero.

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