Characters of Finite Abelian Groups (short Version)

Example 1.2. The trivial character of G is the homomorphism 1G defined by 1G(g) = 1 for all g ∈ G. Example 1.3. Let G be cyclic of order 4 with generator γ. Since γ4 = 1, a character χ of G has χ(γ)4 = 1, so χ takes only four possible values at γ, namely 1, −1, i, or −i. Once χ(γ) is known, the value of χ elsewhere is determined by multiplicativity: χ(γj) = χ(γ)j . So we get four characters, whose values can be placed in a table. See Table 1.