On the existence of a complement for a finite simple group in its automorphism group (Q1409621)

The authors study the question as to whether or not the group \(\Aut(G)\) splits over \(G\simeq\text{Inn}(G)\) where \(G\) is a finite nonabelian simple group. Of course it is obvious that this extension splits in the case of sporadic and alternating groups. Therefore the above question is a problem about finite groups \(G=G(q)\) of Lie type. The main result of the article under review shows that splitting or non-splitting depends on \(q\) and the rank \(\ell\) of the group \(G(q)\). For instance, if \(G(q)\) is untwisted and not of type \(D_\ell\) then \(\Aut(G)\) splits over \(G\) iff \(((q-1)/d,d,m)=1\) where \(q=p^m\), \(p\) a prime and \(d\) is the order of the group \(H/(H\cap\text{Inn}(G))\) where \(H\) is the group of diagonal automorphisms.