On Thursday, 19 July 2012 19:33:48 UTC+8, Javier López Peña wrote:
>
> On Thursday, July 19, 2012 9:52:26 AM UTC+1, Dima Pasechnik wrote:
>>
>> let me nitpick first by saying that in group theory 
>> "presentation" means "presentation by generators and
>> relations" whereas you mean a (linear) "representation".
>>
>
> Fine, maybe I should have use "realization" or "imploementation" instead. 
> I didn't want to mix up "representation" in the group theory sense and in 
> the "internal representation as a sage object" sense. 
>  
>
>> In this way of thinking, the most compact way to represent Z_n is by
>> generators and relations, i.e. Z_n=<a| a^n=1>.
>>
>
> Agreed. There is a patch (#12339) bringing GAP's machinery for finitely 
> presented groups to Sage, and I believe this should be the default 
> implementation for groups defined by generators and relations unless 
> there are severe performance issues, in which case an easy way to opt to
> a more efficient implementation should be provided. 
>

when GAP works with these kinds of groups (any soluble group, in fact), 
it treats them as power-commutator presented groups.
This allows for relatively efficient procedures (many algorithmic problems, 
which are unsolvable 
for general  finitely presented groups, and solvable for power-commutator 
presented groups)

 
>
>> Z_n can also be naturally represented as a permutation group, with 
>> <(1,2,...,n)> the most straightforward one.
>>
>
> Here I don't agree. There is nothing "natural" in the mathematical sense
> (functorial, since you wanted to nitpick) in that representation. The 
> closest
> thing is to consider the Cayley representation of a (finite) group acting 
> on
> itself, but this is terribly inefficient and does not respect group 
> homomorphisms.
>

I didn't mean to use "natural" in categorical sense here.
 

>
> Many groups are internally built in GAP/Sage by means of some "minimal" 
> permutation representation even if they "naturally" are defined as
> (quotients of) matrix groups, try to define PSL(2,7) and look at the 
> generators to see what I mean.
>

sure, you'd get PSL as a permutation group. By you can get SL as a matrix 
group,
no problem about it.  

>
> I am not aware of an easy way of obtaining a sage version of those groups 
> that
> works with matrices; since I am currently performing some heavy 
> computations involving simple groups of up to order 100000 I would 
> certainly benefit from a faster/more efficient internal implementation than
> the default one as groups of permutations. 
>

just use matrix groups rather than projective groups...
 

>
>  
>
>> These are  typically available in GAP (and this in Sage) already.
>> GAP has all these GL, SL, SU, Sp, etc. e.g:
>>
>
> Full matrix groups are, simple groups of Lie type are internally 
> constructed as 
> permutation groups.
>

Huh? I don't think you are right here.

Dima
 

> I would like to have an option to see them as matrix groups. 
>

> Cheers
> J
>  
>

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