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When I first started studying RSA, I found that I need to know Euler's theorem, to understand that I need Fermat's theorem, and to understand that, I need the order theorem of Lagrange which I am trying but don't understand as I never had mathematics as a subject. Everything I did is from my own.

I want to understand more visually rather than just maths.

I reckon from other posts, that to understand the relation of $N$ in RSA which is the composite prime of $pq$, with the Totient of $N$, I need to understand group and order. Which I don't. Other problems of RSA are for crypto.exchange. But this part of maths I want to understand first.

If you would be kind enough to explain, I would be so glad. Thanks :)

Shaun
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1 Answers1

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Lagrange's theorem is one of the most useful theorems in group theory. It just says that the order of any subgroup of a finite group $G$, divides the order of the group. That is, $H\le G\implies |H|||G|$.

Lagrange's theorem implies Fermat's little theorem, because the multiplicative group of the field of order $p$ has order $p-1$. Hence the order of any element $a$ such that $(a,p)=1$ must divide $p-1$. So $a^{p-1}\cong1\pmod p$.

You don't actually need Fermat's little theorem to understand Euler's theorem: more the other way around. The former is a special case of the latter. That is, Euler's theorem generalizes Fermat's little theorem to $(a,n)=1\implies a^{\varphi(n)}\cong1\pmod n$, where $\varphi$ is Euler's totient function. The totient function counts the number of relatiely prime numbers to n less than n, also called totatives. Thus $\varphi(p)=p-1$.

Not sure about the applications to cryptography. I have used these ideas in group theory and number theory more. Maybe you could ask a specific question from cryptography and we could try to answer it. For the applications I refer you to this answer: https://math.stackexchange.com/a/20193/403337.