A note on a pair of orthogonal orthomorphisms of cyclic groups (Q2092341)

Two orthomorphisms \(\theta\) and \(\varphi\) of a finite group \(G\) are said to be orthogonal if the mapping \(x\mapsto \theta(x)^{-1}\varphi(x)\) is a bijection. The maximum possible number of pairwise orthogonal orthomorphisms of \(G\) is denoted by \(\omega(G)\). Let \(\mathbb{Z}_{\nu}\) be a cyclic group of order \(\nu\). It is proved that \(\omega(\mathbb{Z}_{\nu})\geqslant2\) if and only if \(\nu\) is an odd positive integer and \(\nu \notin\{3,9\}\). Further if \(G\) is a finite abelian group, then \(\omega(G)\geqslant2\) if and only if the Sylow 2-subgroup of \(G\) is either trivial or noncyclic except for \(G \in \{\mathbb{Z}_3, \mathbb{Z}_9\}\). The authors provide a direct construction for two orthogonal orthomorphisms of \(\mathbb{Z}_{18t+9}\) with any \(t\geqslant1\) by using the language of matrices.