The operations in this section can be applied to elements of either a group
algebra or of a group algebra subalgebra of type AlgGrpSub.
Only those operations are listed, which are additional to those available
for general algebras.
We use the group algebra to determine the diameter of the Cayley graph of
a group.
> G := Alt(6);
> QG := GroupAlgebra( Rationals(), G );
> e := QG!1 + &+[ QG!g : g in Generators(G) ];
> e;
Id(G) + (1, 2)(3, 4, 5, 6) + (1, 2, 3)
The group elements that can be expressed as words of length at most n in the
generators of G have non-zero coefficient in en.
The following function returns for a group algebra element e a sequence with
the cardinalities of the supports of en and breaks when the group order is
reached.
> wordcount := function(e)
> f := e;
> count := [ #Support(f) ];
> while count[#count] lt #Group(Parent(e)) do
> f *:= e;
> Append(~count, #Support(f));
> end while;
> return count;
> end function;
Now apply this function to the above defined element:
> wordcount( e );
[ 3, 7, 14, 26, 47, 83, 140, 219, 293, 345, 360 ]
Thus, every element in A6 can be expressed as a word of length at most 11
in the generators (1, 2)(3, 4, 5, 6) and (1, 2, 3).
A better 2-generator set is for example (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and (1, 5, 3, 6, 4),
where all elements can be expressed as words of length at most 10 and this
is in fact optimal.
A worst 2-generator set is given by (1, 2)(3, 4) and (1, 5, 3, 2)(4, 6).
> wordcount( QG!1 + G!(1,2,3,4,5) + G!(1,5,3,6,4) );
[ 3, 7, 15, 31, 60, 109, 183, 274, 350, 360 ]
> wordcount( QG!1 + G!(1,2)(3,4) + G!(1,5,3,2)(4,6) );
[ 3, 6, 11, 18, 28, 43, 63, 88, 119, 158, 206, 255, 297, 329, 352, 360 ]
The group algebra can also be used to investigate the random distribution of
words of a certain length in the generators of the group.
> M11 := sub< Sym(11) | (1,11,9,10,4,3,7,2,6,5,8), (1,5,6,3,4,2,7,11,9,10,8) >;
> A := GroupAlgebra(RealField(16), M11 : Rep := "Vector");
> A;
Group algebra with vector representation
Coefficient ring: Real Field of precision 16
Group: Permutation group M11 acting on a set of cardinality 11
Order = 7920 = 2^4 * 3^2 * 5 * 11
(1, 11, 9, 10, 4, 3, 7, 2, 6, 5, 8)
(1, 5, 6, 3, 4, 2, 7, 11, 9, 10, 8)
> e := (A!M11.1 + A!M11.2) / 2.0;
> eta := Eta(A) / #M11;
For growing n, the words of length n in the generators of M11 converge
towards a random distribution iff en converges towards eta.
We look at the quadratic differences of the coefficients of en-eta for
n = 10, 20, 30, 40, 50.
> e10 := e^10;
> f := A!1;
> for i in [1..5] do
> f *:= e10;
> print &+[ c^2 : c in Eltseq(f - eta) ];
> end for;
0.0012050667195213
1.289719354694155e-5
5.9390965208879e-7
3.394099291966e-8
2.19432454574986e-9
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