Subalgebra

In mathematics, a subalgebra is a subset of an algebra, closed under all its operations, and carrying the induced operations.

"", when referring to a structure, often means a vector space or module equipped with an additional bilinear operation. Algebras in universal algebra are far more general: they are a common generalisation of all algebraic structures. Subalgebra can be a subset of both cases.

A subalgebra of an algebra over a commutative ring or field is a vector subspace which is closed under the multiplication of vectors. The restriction of the algebra multiplication makes it an algebra over the same ring or field. This notion also applies to most specializations, where the multiplication must satisfy additional properties, e.g. to associative algebras or to Lie algebras. Only for unital algebras is there a stronger notion, of unital subalgebra, for which it is also required that the unit of the subalgebra be the unit of the bigger algebra.

The 2×2-matrices over the reals form a unital algebra in the obvious way. The 2×2-matrices for which all entries are zero, except for the first one on the diagonal, form a subalgebra. It is also unital, but it is not a unital subalgebra.

In universal algebra, a subalgebra of an algebra A is a subset S of A that also has the structure of an algebra of the same type when the algebraic operations are restricted to S. If the axioms of a kind of algebraic structure is described by equational laws, as is typically the case in universal algebra, then the only thing that needs to be checked is that S is closed under the operations.

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