How statement and proof provenance work
The first chip identifies the source of the statement or construction; the second identifies the source of its local proof or verification.
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- AI-adapted: a semantically identical restatement of literature-sourced material, modulo indexing, notation, and boundary cases adopted by the library.
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These labels describe origin, not correctness: citations and verification chips remain separate evidence.
Exponent laws in a group: and for all , and when and commute
Statement
Let be a group (Group and abelian group) with identity , let , and let powers be as in Powers : natural exponents in a monoid and integer exponents in a group, with . For all :
- ;
- ;
- ;
- : any two powers of one element commute;
- if then .
Claim 5 is false in general without its hypothesis: in a group in which and do not commute the equation can fail already at , and a witness is recorded on the companion page.
Claims 1 and 3 hold in any monoid (Semigroup and monoid) for exponents in , and so does claim 5 for exponents in under the same commuting hypothesis; only the extension to negative exponents needs inverses.
Facts & Assumptions
Given: A group with identity and elements ; powers for defined by and , and for defined by and for (Powers : natural exponents in a monoid and integer exponents in a group, with ). Throughout, is the embedding of The naturals embed in the integers, and a natural number written where an integer is expected means its image under .
Induction on (The principle of mathematical induction).
The group laws: associativity, the two-sided identity , and two-sided inverses (Group and abelian group, Semigroup and monoid).
, and in a group (In a group , and , the order of the last product being essential).
is injective, preserves addition, multiplication and order, and its image is exactly the set of nonnegative integers; and (The naturals embed in the integers, Arithmetic on the integers).
is a commutative ring: addition and multiplication are associative and commutative, , , multiplication distributes over addition, and every has an additive inverse (The integers form a commutative ring, Arithmetic on the integers); every integer is for naturals , and then (The integers as equivalence classes of pairs of naturals).
The order on is total and compatible with addition, so exactly one of , holds, and implies (The integers form a totally ordered ring, Order on the integers).
On : addition satisfies and , so (Addition of natural numbers, The natural numbers (von Neumann)); it is commutative (Addition is commutative); means for some (Order on the natural numbers); and exactly one of , , holds (Trichotomy of the order on ).
Proof
Natural exponents, base of claim 1: for every , .
Natural exponents, inductive hypothesis for claim 1: fix and assume for every and every .
Suppose ; base of the commuting sub-claim: .
Inductive hypothesis of the commuting sub-claim: assume .
Base of claim 5 for natural exponents: .
Inductive hypothesis of claim 5 for natural exponents: assume and .
If in then : multiplying on the left and on the right by gives , and regrouping both sides gives . Consequently .
Claim 2 for a nonnegative exponent. If then , so and . If then because preserves the order, so and the second clause of the definition gives directly.
Claim 3 for a nonnegative second exponent, base: , since in .
Claim 3 for a nonnegative second exponent, inductive hypothesis: assume for this and every .
Successor step for claim 1 with natural exponents: ; by induction, for all , in any monoid.
Successor step for the commuting sub-claim: ; by induction for every whenever .
Claim 2 in general. If then and step 1.8 gives . If then , so and by definition , whence . This is claim 2.
Successor step for claim 5 with natural exponents: assuming , , the fourth equality being step 2.2 applied to and ; by induction for every .
Normal form. Let and write with , possible since for some naturals. Then . Indeed, by trichotomy either , say , in which case and , using step 2.1 twice together with commutativity of addition on ; or , say with , in which case and , the third equality using step 1.7 with and , which commute by step 2.1.
Claim 1 for integer exponents. Write and , so . By step 3.2 and step 2.1, . On the other side , moving past by step 1.7, since and commute by step 2.1. Finally by step 1.7 again, so the two sides agree.
Claim 5 for a negative exponent: assume and let , so with . Then by claim 2 and step 3.1; and and commute, by step 2.2 applied twice, so their inverses commute by step 1.7, giving . With step 3.1 this proves claim 5 for every .
Claim 4. By claim 1 and commutativity of addition in , .
Claim 3, successor step: , using the hypothesis, then claim 1, then distributivity in , then . By induction, for every and every . When is itself nonnegative the two exponents and occurring here are nonnegative as well, so the appeal to claim 1 is an appeal to its monoid form, step 2.1, and the computation uses no inverse; that is the natural-exponent case, valid in any monoid.
Claim 3 for a negative second exponent: let , so . Applying claim 2 to the element gives , which by step 5.2 equals , using claim 2 once more and then . Together with step 5.2 this is claim 3.
Claims 1 to 5 are established: claim 1 in step 4.1, claim 2 in step 2.3, claim 3 in step 6.1, claim 4 in step 5.1 and claim 5 in steps 3.1 and 4.2; the natural-exponent forms of claims 1, 3 and 5 are steps 2.1, 5.2 and 3.1, and use no inverses.
Remarks
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The commuting hypothesis in claim 5 is not a technicality. Without it the law fails, and the title of this item carries the hypothesis for that reason. The published Laws of integer exponents states the corresponding law without a hypothesis, and is correct because it is about a field, where multiplication is commutative by definition; nothing there transfers to a general group.
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Where each law is really used. Claim 1 is what makes a homomorphism from and hence what makes cyclic subgroups behave; claim 4 is why every cyclic group is abelian (, and every cyclic group is abelian); claim 2 is what lets every statement about negative exponents be reduced to a statement about natural ones, which is how the case analysis above is kept finite.
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The proof splits an arbitrary integer as rather than by cases on its sign wherever possible. That is deliberate: the normal form of step 3.2 is proved once and then every integer identity is a computation with natural powers and inverses.
Depends on
Powers : natural exponents in a monoid and integer exponents in a group, with
Group and abelian group
Semigroup and monoid
In a group , and , the order of the last product being essential
The principle of mathematical induction
The integers form a commutative ring
The integers form a totally ordered ring
The integers as equivalence classes of pairs of naturals
Arithmetic on the integers
Order on the integers
The naturals embed in the integers
Trichotomy of the order on
The natural numbers (von Neumann)
Addition of natural numbers
Order on the natural numbers
Addition is commutative