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Order (group theory)

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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, \text{ord}(x) \mid \text{ord}(G), when is finite. In a number theoretic context, this proves Fermat's Little Theorem and Euler's generalization.

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