Automorphisms of Cayley graphs of metacyclic groups of prime-power order (Q2765553)

Cayley graphs \(\Gamma= \text{Cay}(G, S)\) are considered (where \(G\) is a finite group, \(1\) is the unit element of \(G\) and \(S\) is a subset of \(G\setminus\{1\})\). We suppose \(S= S^{-1}\) (this means that \(\Gamma\) is substantially undirected). The group of the automorphisms of \(\Gamma\) and \(G\) is denoted by \(\Aut \Gamma\) and \(\Aut G\), respectively. If \(G\) has a normal subgroup \(K\) such that \(K\) and the factor group \(G/K\) are cyclic, then we say that \(G\) is a metacyclic group. The semidirect product of \(G\) and \(H\) is denoted by \(G\rtimes H\). Let the subgroup \(\Aut(G,S)\) of \(\Aut G\) consist of the automorphisms which fix \(S\) globally. It is known that \(G\) is isomorphic to a regular subgroup of \(\Aut \Gamma\). Usually, \(\Aut G\) is much easier to determine than \(\Aut \Gamma\).NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINELet \(G\) be a metacyclic \(p\)-group for an odd prime \(p\). The main result of the paper gives a characterization of \(\Aut \Gamma\) (where \(\Gamma= \text{Cay}(G, S)\)). As a corollary of this theorem, we get that \(\Aut \Gamma\) is isomorphic to \(G\rtimes\Aut(G, S)\) when \(G\) is not abelian and the valency of \(\Gamma\) is less than \(2p\). The main theorem is proved through a sequence of lemmas, dealing mainly with the solubility of the socle of \(\Aut \Gamma\).