Order (group theory)
In group theory, the term order has different meanings in different contexts.
The order of a group , sometimes denoted
, is the cardinality of its underlying set.
The order of an element of
,
, is the order of the subset generated by
. If
is finite, then it is also the least positive integer
for which
.
In number theory, for relatively prime to
, the order of
(mod
) usually means the order of
in the multiplicative group of non-zero divisors in
.
By Lagrange's Theorem, , when
is finite. In a number theoretic context, this proves Fermat's Little Theorem and Euler's generalization.
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