From endomorphisms to bi-skew braces, regular subgroups, the Yang-Baxter equation, and Hopf-Galois structures (Q1984361)

It is known that regular subgroups in the holomorph are closely connected to skew braces, which are in turn related to set-theoretic solutions of the Yang-Baxter equation, and Hopf-Galois structures. We refer the reader to the paper under review and the references therein for details. Let \(G\) be a group and let \(\mathrm{Hol}(G)\) denote its (permutational) holomorph. For each \(g\in G\), write \[ \lambda(g) = (x\mapsto gx),\,\ \rho(g) = (x\mapsto xg^{-1}),\,\ \iota(g) = (x\mapsto gxg^{-1}) \] for the associated elements of \(\mathrm{Hol}(G)\) given by left translation, right translation, and conjugation, respectively. For any endomorphism \(\varphi\) of \(G\), put \[ N_{(\varphi)} = \{\lambda(g) \rho(\varphi(g)) : g\in G\}, \] which is a subgroup of \(\mathrm{Hol}(G)\). \textit{L. N. Childs} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 141, 1255--1265 (2013; Zbl 1269.12003)] showed that \(N_{(\varphi)}\) is regular and is normalized by \(\lambda(G)\) when \(\varphi\) is fixed point free and has abelian image (for a finite group \(G\)). Note that regularity cannot be maintained if one drops the fixed point free condition. For any endomorphism \(\psi\) of \(G\), instead put \[ N_{\psi,-} = \{\lambda(g)\iota(\psi(g)^{-1}) : g\in G\}, \] which is a regular subset of \(\mathrm{Hol}(G)\). This construction is due to [\textit{A. Koch}, Proc. Am. Math. Soc., Ser. B 8, 189--203 (2021; Zbl 1473.16027)], where he showed that \(N_{\psi,-}\) is a subgroup and is normalized by \(\lambda(G)\) when \(\psi\) has abelian image (the fixed point free condition is not longer required). In particular, the skew brace associated to \(N_{\psi,-}\) is always a bi-skew brace in this case. The construction \(N_{(\varphi)}\) may be recovered as a special case of \(N_{\psi,-}\). The purpose of the paper under review is to further generalize Koch's construction by dropping the assumption that \(\psi\) has abelian image and by considering \[ N_{\psi,+} = \{\lambda(g)\iota(\psi(g)) : g\in G\}, \] which is also a regular subset of \(\mathrm{Hol}(G)\). In Theorem 1.1, the authors show that \(N_{\psi,-}\) is a subgroup exactly when \(^\psi[[G,\psi],G]\leq Z(G)\), in which case \(N_{\psi,-}\) is always normalized by \(\lambda(G)\). In Theorem 1.2, they show that \(N_{\psi,+}\) is a subgroup exactly when \(^\psi[^\psi G,G]\leq Z(G)\), and is in addition normalized by \(\lambda(G)\) exactly when \(^\psi[G,G]\leq Z(G)\). In the language of skew braces, the normalization condition says that the skew brace associated to \(N_{\psi,-}\) is always a bi-skew brace, but this is not the case for \(N_{\psi,+}\). In Section 4, the authors provide examples of \(\psi\) satisfying the above conditions which have non-abelian image so they are not covered by the construction of Kohl. In Section 5, they compute the set-theoretic solutions of the Yang-Baxter equation associated to the skew braces constructed via \(N_{\psi,\pm}\). In Section 7, they give examples of subgroups of \(N_{\psi,\pm}\) normalized by \(\lambda(G)\), which correspond to \(K\)-sub-Hopf algebras of the Hopf-Galois structure associated to \(N_{\psi,\pm}\).