Integral group ring automorphisms without Zassenhaus factorization (Q1850240)

Let \(\mathbb{Z} G\) be the integral group ring of a finite group \(G\). An automorphism \(\alpha\) of the ring \(\mathbb{Z} G\) is said to have a Zassenhaus factorization if it is a composition of an automorphism of \(G\) (extended to a ring automorphism) and a central automorphism (fixing the center of \(\mathbb{Z} G\) elementwise). In this paper the author proves that for a group \(G\) of order 144 there is a normalized (i.e. augmentation preserving) automorphism \(\alpha\) of \(\mathbb{Z} G\) which has no Zassenhaus factorization and \(\alpha\) can be chosen to have finite order. Moreover, there is a group \(G\) of order 1200 with Abelian Sylow subgroups and Sylow tower, such that \(\mathbb{Z} G\) has a normalized automorphism which has no Zassenhaus factorization. These results are counterexamples of a conjecture of H. Zassenhaus.