Operators of fibered groups (Q1107622)

A family of proper subgroups of a group G is called a fibration of G if their union is G and any two distinct members of the family have trivial intersection. The study of such fibrations is known to be related to geometry. The author considers pairs (G,\({\mathcal F})\) where G is a finite group with non-trivial centre and \({\mathcal F}\) is a fibration of G. Aut(G,\({\mathcal F})\) is defined to be the set of all those automorphisms mapping every member of \({\mathcal F}\) onto a member of \({\mathcal F}\) and (G,\({\mathcal F})\) is said to be full if Aut(G,\({\mathcal F})=Aut G\). A fibration \({\mathcal F}\) is said to be complete if every member of it is cyclic, \({\mathcal F}\) is said to be nearly complete if at most one member of \({\mathcal F}\) is non-cyclic and this member, if it exists, is a characteristic subgroup of G. It is said to be characteristic if the image of every member of \({\mathcal F}\) under every automorphism of G is a member of \({\mathcal F}\). The authors give various situations under which (G,\({\mathcal F})\) is full. Examples: (1) If G is abelian, (G,\({\mathcal F})\) is full if and only if \({\mathcal F}\) is complete. (2) If \({\mathcal F}\) is nearly complete then \({\mathcal F}\) is characteristic and (G,\({\mathcal F})\) is full. (3) If G satisfies Hughes' \(H_ p\)-conjecture with \(H_ p(G)\) non-trivial for some prime divisor p of the order of G (and G has non-trivial centre) then (G,\({\mathcal F})\) is full. (4) If G is a p-group of class 2 with exp(G)\(\neq p\) then \({\mathcal F}\) is nearly complete and (G,\({\mathcal F})\) is full.