No label defined (Q4454469)

The author gives a mechanical method of determining the isomorphism class, and therefore the abstract group structure, of a Fuchsian group, which are discrete groups, just by looking at its unique signature. The signature of a Fuchsian group is uniquely determined by the genus of the Riemann surface which underlies the group, some positive integers greater than \(1\), called periods, which are the orders of the elliptic generators, together with two non-negative integers called the parabolic and hyperbolic class numbers. The method relies on the famous representation of a Fuchsian group in terms of its generators, and some results about free groups and products. The author, noticing that any one of the \(2g + t + u\) generators can be expressed as a combination of the others, determines the rank of the free part of any given Fuchsian group and all the rest is about the finite generators. The author ends the paper with a corollary saying that any subgroup of the modular group or any one of the Hecke groups is isomorphic to the free product of a free group together with some finite cyclic groups.