Field

Field

A field is a set on which:

  • addition (and its inverse of subtraction)
  • multiplication (and its inverse of division)
    Are all defined and behave as the corresponding operations on rational (and consequently real) numbers. The operations above must satisfy:
  • Associativity: a+(b+c)=(a+b)+c and a⋅(bc)=(ab)⋅c
  • Commutativity: a+b=b+a and ab=ba
  • Additive Identity: ∃0 where a+0=a
  • Multiplicative identity: ∃1 where a⋅1=a
  • Additive inverse: ∃−a where a+(−a)=0
  • Multiplicative inverse: ∃a−1 such that a⋅a−1=1
  • Distributivity: a⋅(b+c)=(a⋅b)+(a⋅c)

We note that Q is a field, where:

Additive Identity ≠ Multiplicative identity

Only other than the trivial field {0}, all other fields don't have their additive identity equal to their multiplicative identity. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive_identity

In the Context of Groups

When talking about Groups we can redefine what properties must hold for a field:

field (groups)

  1. A field is a set F together with two binary operations + and ⋅ such that (F,+) is an Abelian Group (call its identity 0) and (F−{0},⋅) is also an abelian group, and the following distributive law holds:
a⋅(b+c)=(a⋅b)+(a⋅c)∀a,b,c∈F
  1. For any field F let F×=F−{0}

References

  1. [[Abbott Real Analysis.pdf#page=16]]
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_(mathematics)
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive_identity