Automorphisms of direct products of finite groups. (Q2499312)

The main result of this note is the following Theorem 3.2: Let \(G=H\times K\), where \(H,K\) are finite groups having no common nontrivial direct factor. Then \[ |\Aut(G)|=|\Aut(H)|\,|\Aut(K)|\,|\Hom(H,Z(K))|\,|\Hom(K,Z(H))|. \] This is done by cleverly expressing \(\text{End}(H\times K)\) as a monoid on the set of certain ``\(2\times 2\)-matrices with homomorphism entries'' and extends the well-known result asserting that \(|\Aut(H\times K)|=|\Aut(H)||\Aut(K)|\) whenever \((|H|,|K|)=1\).