Component (group theory)

In mathematics, in the field of group theory, a component of a finite group is a quasisimple subnormal subgroup. Any two distinct components commute. The product of all the components is the layer of the group.

For finite abelian (or nilpotent) groups, p-component is used in a different sense to mean the Sylow p-subgroup, so the abelian group is the product of its p-components for primes p. These are not components in the sense above, as abelian groups are not quasisimple.