Cyclic Groups
We began our study of abstract algebra very concretely, by looking at the group Z of integers, and the related groups Z_n. We discovered that each of these groups is generated by a single element, and this motivated the definition of an abstract cyclic group. In this section, Theorem 3.5.2 shows that every cyclic group is isomorphic to one of these concrete examples, so all of the information about cyclic groups is already contained in these basic examples.
You should pay particular attention to Proposition 3.5.3, which describes the subgroups of Z_n, showing that they are in one-to-one correspondence with the positive divisors of n. In n is a prime power, then the subgroups are “linearly Ordered” in the sense that given any two subgroups, one is a subset of the other. These cyclic groups have a particularly simple structure, and form the basic building blocks for all finite abelian groups. (In Theorem 7.5.4 we will prove that every finite abelian group is isomorphic to a direct product of cyclic groups of prime power order.)