Let
be a vector space and
be a basis of
. Given any vector space
and any elements
, there is a linear transformation
such that
. One could say that this happens because the elements
of a basis are not "related" to each other (formally, they are linearly independent). Indeed, if, for example, we had the relation
for some scalar
(and then
wasn't linearly independent), then the linear transformation
could not exist.
Let us consider a similar problem with groups: given a group
spanned by a set
and given any group
and any set
, does there always exist a group morphism
such that
? The answer is no. For example, consider the group
which is spanned by the set
, the group
(with the adition operation) and the set
. If there exists a group morphism
such that
, then
, which is impossible. But if instead we had choose
, then such a group morphism does exist and it would be given by
. Indeed, given any group
and any
, we have the group morphism
defined by
(in multiplicative notation) that verifies
. In a way, we can think that this happens because the elements of the set
(that spans
) don't verify relations like
(like
) or
. So, it seems that
is a group more "free" that
.
Our goal in this section will be, given a set
, build a group spanned by the set
such that it will be the most "free" possible, in the sense that it doesn't have to obey relations like
or
. To do so, we begin by constructing a "free" monoid (in the same sense). Informally, this monoid will be the monoid of the words written with the letters of the alphabet
, where the identity will be the word with no letters (the "empty word"), and the binary operation of the monoid will be concatenation of words. The notation
that we will use for the element of this monoid meets this idea that the elements of this monoid are the words
where
are letters of the alphabet
. Here is the definition of this monoid.
Definition Let
be a set.
- We denote the
-tuples
with
and
by
.
- We denote
, that is
with
, by
.
- We denote by
the set
.
- We define in
the concatenation operation
by
.
Next we prove that this monoid is indeed a monoid. It's an easy to prove result, we need to show associativity of
and that
.
Proposition
is a monoid with identity
.
Proof The operation
is associative because, given any
, we have




.
It's obvious that
has the identity
as
by the definition of
and
.
Following the idea that the monoid
is the most "free" monoid spanned by
, we will call it the free monoid spanned by
.
Definition Let
be a set. We denote the free monoid spanned by
by
.
Examples
- Let
. Then
and, for example,
.
- Let
. Then
and, for example,
.
Now let us construct the more "free" group spanned by a set
. Informally, what we will do is insert in the monoid
the inverse elements that are missing in it for it to be a group. In a more precise way, we will have a set
equipotent to
, choose a bijection from
to
and in this way achieve a "association" between the elements of
and the elements of
. Then we face
(with
) as having the inverse element
(with
), where
is is associated with
, respectively. Let us note that the order of the elements in
is "reversed" because the inverse of the product
must be
, and the
are, respectively,
. The way we do that
be the inverse of
is to take a congruence relation
that identifies
with
, and pass to the quotient
by this relation (defining then, in a natural way, the binary operation of the group,
). By taking the quotient, we are formalizing the intuitive idea of identifying
with
, because in the quotient we have the equality
. Let us give the formal definition.
Definition Let
be a set. Let us take another set
equipotent to
and disjoint from
and let
be a bijective application.
- For each
let us denote
by
, for each
let us denote
by
and for each
let us denote
by
.
- Let
be the congruence relation of
spanned by
, this is,
is the intersection of all the congruence relations in
wich have
as a subset. We denote the quotient set
by
.
Frequently, abusing the notation, we represent an element
simply by
.
Because the operation
that we want to define in
is defined using particular represententes
and
of the equivalence classes
and
, a first precaution is to verify that the definition does not depend on the chosen representatives. It's an easy verification.
Lemma Let
be a set. It is well defined in
the binary operation
by
(where
is the congruence relation of the previous definition).
Proof Let
be any elements such that
and
, this is,
and
. Because
is a congruence relation in
, we have
, this is,
.
Because the definition is valid, we present it.
Definition Let
be a set. We define in
the binary operation
by
.
Finally, we verify that the group that we constructed is indeed a group.
Proposition Let
be a set.
is a group with identity
and where
.
Proof
is associative because
![{\displaystyle [u*(v*w)]_{R}=[u]_{R}\star [v*w]_{R}=[u]_{R}\star ([v]_{R}\star [w]_{R}).}](https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/media/math/render/svg/8193a689a48d5116f2ecab4326e82f68c1570270)
- Let us see that
is the identity
. Let
be any element. We have
and, in the same way,
.
- Let
be any element and let us see that
. We have
and, by definition of
,
, this is,
, therefore
and, in the same way,
. 
In the same way that we did with the free monoid, we will call free group spanned by the set
to the more "free" group spanned by this set.
Definition Let
be a set. We call free group spanned by
to
.
Example Let
. Let us choose any set
disjoint (and equipotent) of
. Let
be any (in fact, the only) bijective application of
in
. Then we denote
by
and we denote
by
. We regard
and
as inverse elements. Let
be the congruence relation of
spanned by
.
is the set of all "words" written in the alphabet
. For example,
.
We have
and, for example,
, because
(therefore
) and because
is a congruence relation, we can "multiply" both "members" of the relation
by
and obtain
. We see
as meaning that in
We have
(more precisely,
), and we think in this equality as being the result of one
"cut out" with
in
.
Given
, let us denote the exact number of times that the "letter"
appears in
by
and let us denote the exact number of times the "letter"
appears in
by
. Then "cutting"
's with
's it remains a reduced word word with
times the letter
(if
, let us us consider that there aren't any letters
and remains
times the letter
). Let us denote
by
. We have
if and only if
and
.
In this way, each element
is determined by the integer number
and the product
of two elements
correspondent to the sum of they associated integers numbers
and
. Therefore, it seems that the group
is "similar" to
. indeed
is isomorph to
and the application
is a group isomorphism.
Informally, it seems that
is obtained from the "free" group
imposing the relation
. Let us try formalize this idea. We start with a set
that spans a group
that que want to create and a set of relations
(such as
or
) that the elements of
must verify and we obtain a group
spanned by
and that verify the relations of
. More precisely, we write each relation
in the form
(for example,
is written in the form
) and we see each
as a "word" of
. Because
doesn't have to be a normal subgroup of
, we can not consider the quotient
, so we consider the quotient
where
is the normal subgroup of
spanned by
. In
, we will have
, which we see as meaning that in
the elements
and
are the same. In this way,
will verify all the relations that we want and will be spanned by
(more precisely, by
). Let us formalize this idea.
Definition Let
be a group. We call presentation of
, and denote by
, to a ordered pair
where
is a set,
and
, where
is the normal subgroup of
spanned by
. Given a presentation
, we call spanning set to
and set of relations to
.
Let us see some examples of presentations of the free group
and the groups
,
,
and
. We also use the examples to present some common notation and to show that a presentation of a group does not need to be unique.
Examples
- Let
be a set.
is a presentation of
because
, where
is the normal subgroup of
spanned by
. In particular,
is a presentation of
, more commonly denoted by
. Another presentation of
is
, more commonly denoted by
. Informally, in the presentation
we insert a new element
in the spanning set, but we impose the relation
, this is,
, which is the same as having not introduced the element
and have stayed by the presentation
.
- Let
.
(where
times) is a presentation of
. Indeed, the subgroup of
spanned by
is
and
, therefore
. Is more common to denote
by
.
- Let
(with
and
distinct) and
.
is a presentation of
. Informally, what we do is impose comutatibility in
, this is,
, this is,
, obtaining a group isomorph to
. It's more usually denote
by
.
- Let
and
.
is a presentation of
. Informally, what we do is impose commutability in the same way as in the previous example, and we impose
and
to obtain
instead
. It's more common denote
by
.
, more commonly written
, is a presentation of
, the group of the permutations of
with the composition of applications. To verify this, one can verify that any group with presentation
as exactly six elements
,
,
,
,
,
and
, and that the multiplication of this elements results in the following Cayley table that is equal to the Cayley table of
. Just to give an idea how this can be achieved, a group with presentation
as exactly the elements
,
,
,
,
,
and
because none of this elements are the same (the relations
don't allow us to conclude that two of the elements are equal) and because "another" elements like
are actually one of the previous elements (for example, from
we have
, and taking inverses of both members, we have
, which, using
, this is,
,
and
, results in
). Then, using the relations of the presentation, one can compute the Cayley table. For example,
because we have the relation
. Another example: we have
because we can multiply both members of the relation
by
and then use
. One could have suspected of this presentation by taking
,
and
and then, trying to construct the Cayley table of
, found out that it was possible if one know that
.
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It's natural to ask if all groups have a presentation. The following theorem tell us that the answer is yes, and it give us a presentation.
Theorem Let
be a group.
- The application
defined by
(where
) is an epimorphism of groups.
is a presentation of
.
Proof
is well defined because every element of
as a unique representations in the form
with
, with the exception of
appears several times in the representation, but that doesn't affect the value of
Let
be any elements, where
. We have
, therefore
is a morphism of groups. Because
, then
is a epimorphism of groups.
- Using the first isomorphism theorem (for groups), we have
, therefore
is a presentation of
. 
The previous theorem, despite giving us a presentations of the group
, doesn't give us a "good" presentation, because the spanning set
is usually much larger that other spanning sets, and the set of relations
is also usually much larger then other sufficient sets of relations (it is even a normal subgroup of
, when it would be enough that it span an appropriated normal subgroup).