On my homework today, we had to find all the normal subgroups of $D_{n}$, the dihedral group of order 2n. I solved the problem by looking at how the conjugacy classes change based on whether n is even or odd and then constructed the normal subgroups as unions of the conjugacy classes.
I have 2 questions:
(i) Is there a better way to approach the problem than looking at the conjugacy classes?
(ii) Could someone explain why we want to find all the normal subgroups of a particular group? How does this provide us additional insight into the structure of the group we are studying? (Right now, this exercise feels more like a 'computation' to me than a way of understanding $D_{n}$)
Thanks 🙂
Best Answer
(i) Conjugacy classes are certainly useful, since a normal subgroup must be a union of conjugacy classes. There are other ideas that can come into play: once you know a proper normal subgroup $N$, by taking the quotient you can obtain information about $G$ from information you may find in $G/N$, which will hopefully be easier than working directly in $G$ because $G/N$ will be smaller than $G$.
(ii) In fact, that is one important reason for finding all normal subgroups: being able to look at the quotient, and thus obtain information about $G$ by looking at groups that are smaller than $G$. Another is that the normal subgroups are closely associated with all possible images of $G$ under homomorphisms. Both of these facts are part of the Isomorphism Theorems.
Right now you are probably engaged in computation and getting familiar with techniques for working with groups in general, and $D_n$ in particular; the importance of normal subgroups will likely emerge as you start using groups. For example, normal subgroups are extremely important when you are considering Galois groups (which help you study fields and field extensions).