The isomorphism problem for Cayley digraphs on groups of prime-squared order (Q1894769)

Given a subset \(T\) of a group \(G\), the corresponding ``Cayley digraph'' is the directed graph whose vertices are the elements of \(G\) and whose edges go from \(g\) to \(gt\) for every \(g\in G\) and \(t\in T\). For \(p\) prime, there are two non-isomorphic groups of order \(p^2\). In this paper the author determines precisely which Cayley digraphs on one of these two groups are isomorphic to a Cayley digraph on the other group. This is done by proving the following theorem. Let \(X\) be a Cayley digraph on a group \(G\) of order \(p^2\) with subset \(T\). Then the following three statements are equivalent: (1) The digraph \(X\) is isomorphic to a Cayley digraph on each of the two groups of order \(p^2\). (2) There exists a subgroup \(H\) of order \(p\) in \(G\) such that, for every \(t\in T\) with \(t\not\in H\), the set \(T\) contains the whole coset \(tH\). (3) The digraph \(X\) is isomorphic to the lexicographic product of two Cayley digraphs of order \(p\). The proof is based on the fact that, if \(X\) is as in (1), then its automorphism group must contain both cyclic and non-cyclic regular subgroups of order \(p^2\).