Hopf-Galois structures of squarefree degree (Q2186022)

\textit{C. Greither} and \textit{B. Pareigis} [J. Algebra 106, 239--258 (1987; Zbl 0615.12026)] showed that the enumeration of Hopf-Galois structures on separable field extensions may be reduced to a group-theoretic problem. In particular, when \(L/K\) is a Galois extension of fields with Galois group \(\Gamma\), there is a bijection between Hopf-Galois structures \(\mathcal{H}\) on \(L/K\) and regular subgroups \(\mathcal{G}\) of \(\mathrm{Perm}(\Gamma)\) which are normalized by the subgroup of left translations. The \textit{type} of \(\mathcal{H}\) is defined to be the isomorphism class of the corresponding regular subgroup \(\mathcal{G}\). For each group \(G\) of the same (finite) order as \(\Gamma\), let \(e(\Gamma,G)\) denote the number of Hopf-Galois structures of type \(G\) on a Galois extension \(L/K\) with Galois group \(\Gamma\). By [Greither and Pareigis (loc. cit.)] and [\textit{N. P. Byott}, Commun. Algebra 24, No. 10, 3217--3228 (1996; Zbl 0878.12001)], it is well-known in the study of Hopf-Galois structures that \[ e(\Gamma,G) = \frac{|\Aut(\Gamma)|}{|\Aut(G)|} \cdot \#\{\mbox{regular subgroups of \(\mathrm{Hol}(G)\) isomorphic to \(\Gamma\)}\}, \] where \(\mathrm{Hol}(G) = G\rtimes \Aut(G)\) denotes the \textit{holomorph} of \(G\). In their previous paper [\textit{A. A. Alabdali} and \textit{N. P. Byott}, J Algebra 493, 1--19 (2018; Zbl 1418.12001)], the authors considered cyclic groups \(\Gamma\) of squarefree order and gave a very nice formula for \(e(\Gamma,G)\) in this case. A key ingredient was [\textit{M. M. Ram} and \textit{M. V. Kumar}, Math. Ann. 267, 299--309 (1984; Zbl 0531.10048)], which characterized groups whose Sylow subgroups are all cyclic, and thus groups of squarefree order. Any group \(G\) of squarefree order is split metacyclic, and the structure of \(\Aut(G)\) is fairly simple (see Lemmas 2.1 and 4.1 of the paper). The holomorph \(\mathrm{Hol}(G)\) of \(G\) is therefore reasonably understood. In the current paper, the authors extended their previous work by allowing \(\Gamma\) to be any group of squarefree order. They were again able to obtain a formula for \(e(\Gamma,G)\), and it was done by carefully analyzing the regular subgroups of \(\mathrm{Hol}(G)\) and via certain congruence calculations. The formula is given in Theorem 2.2 of the paper. In Section 9, they applied their theorem to recover some known results in the literature, and they also gave a full treatment of the case when the order is a product of three distinct primes. Remark: Regular subgroups in the holomorph are closely related to certain algebraic structures called \textit{skew braces}, which were introduced by [\textit{L. Guarnieri} and \textit{L. Vendramin}, Math. Comput. 86, No. 307, 2519--2534 (2017; Zbl 1317.16037)] to study set-theoretic solutions of the Yang-Baxter equation. In another paper [\textit{A. A. Alabdali} and \textit{N. P. Byott}, ``Skew braces of squarefree order'', J. Algebra Appl. (to appear)], the authors applied their results in the current paper to enumerate skew braces of squarefree order.