Cycle (mathematics)

This article is about group theory. For cycles in homological algebra, see Chain complex#Fundamental terminology. For cycles in graph theory, see Cycle (graph theory).

In mathematics, and in particular in group theory, a cycle is a permutation of the elements of some set X which maps the elements of some subset S to each other in a cyclic fashion, while fixing (i.e., mapping to themselves) all other elements. The set S is called the orbit of the cycle.

Definition

A permutation of a set X, which is a bijective function $\sigma:X\to X$, is called a cycle if the action on X of the subgroup generated by σ has exactly one orbit with more than a single element. This notion is most commonly used when X is a finite set; then of course the orbit S in question is also finite. Let s₀ be any element of S, and put $s_i=\sigma^i(s) \,$ for any $i\in\mathbf{Z}$. Since by assumption S has more than one element, $s_1\neq s_0$; if S is finite, there is a minimal number k > 1 for which s_k = s₀. Then $S=\{ s_0, s_1, \ldots, s_{k-1}\}$, and σ is the permutation defined by

$\sigma(s_i) = s_{i+1} \quad\mbox{for }0\leq i<k$

and σ(x) = x for any element of $X\setminus S$. The elements not fixed by σ can be pictured as

$s_0\mapsto s_1\mapsto s_2\mapsto\cdots\mapsto s_{k-1}\mapsto s_k=s_0$.

A cycle can be written using the compact cycle notation $\sigma = (s_0~s_1~\dots~s_{k-1})$ (there are no commas between elements in this notation, to avoid confusion with a k-tuple). The length of a cycle, is the number of elements of its orbit of non-fixed elements. A cycle of length k is also called a k-cycle.

Basic properties

One of the basic results on symmetric groups says that any permutation can be expressed as the product of disjoint cycles (more precisely: cycles with disjoint orbits); such cycles commute with each other, and the expression of the permutation is unique up to the order of the cycles (but note that the cycle notation is not unique: each k-cycle can itself be written in k different ways, depending on the choice of s₀ in its orbit). The multiset of lengths of the cycles in this expression is therefore uniquely determined by the permutation, and both the signature and the conjugacy class of the permutation in the symmetric group are determined by it.

The number of k-cycles in the symmetric group S_n is given, for $2\leq k\leq n$, by the following equivalent formulas

$\binom nk(k-1)!=\frac{n(n-1)\cdots(n-k+1)}{k}=\frac{n!}{(n-k)!k}$

A k-cycle has signature (−1)^k − 1.

See also

• Cycles and fixed points
• fifteen puzzle
• symmetric group
• transposition
• group
• subgroup
• dihedral group
• cycle detection

References

• Anderson, Marlow and Feil, Todd (2005), A First Course in Abstract Algebra, Chapman & Hall/CRC; 2nd edition. ISBN 1584885157.
• Fraleigh, John (2002), A first course in abstract algebra (7th ed.), Addison Wesley, ISBN 978-0201763904 

This article incorporates material from cycle on PlanetMath, which is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.