Prove or disprove: Every subgroup of the integers has finite index.
Let be a subgroup of . First of all, we study apart the case of . In this case has an infinite index, but this is a degenerate case.
Now let be a non-trivial subgroup, then has a non-zero element with a minimal absolute value . Let us prove that . First, . Second, suppose that there is such that with . The euclidian division of by gives us a remainder (as and both terms are in ), but by the properties of a euclidian division as . This condraticts the fact that is of minimal absolute value. Therefore, and we easily deduce that the index of is and so is finite.
We conclude that the index of every non-trivial subgroup of the integers is finite. For the trivial subgroup this is obviously false.
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