The Representation of Finite Groups, Especially of the Rotation Groups of the Regular Bodies of Three-and Four-Dimensional Space, by Cayley's Color Diagrams

Abstract

The graphical representation of a group given by Cayley* leads to a diagram consisting of several lines of different colors, a so-called color-group, which affords a very clear insight into the structure of the group. Cayley himself applied his method only to groups of comparatively low orders, and it seems that the inethod has never been used for more complicated cases.t The purpose of the present paper is to show how readily Cayley's method can be applied to the construction and investigation of numerous groups of higher orders. In particular, the color diagrams for the rotation groups of the regular bodies can be arranged in such a way that they lend themselves miuch easier, at least in some respects, to a study of the groups concerned, than even the models of the regular bodies. The most prominent feature of these diagrams, to which their high degree of perspicuity is due, consists in the fact that their color lines do not intersect each other, so that the diagrams, when described on the sphere, constitute convex polyhedrons. I determine, in the first part of the paper, all the color-groups thus defined and show that, apart from two other cases, they are identical with the rotation groups of the regular bodies. In the second part I study in detail the connection between the rotation groups and the corresponding diagrams. The third part of the paper contains some extensions of the