The real genus of the groups of order 48 (Q486318)

A bordered Klein surface is a compact, orientable or non-orientable surface with non-empty boundary, the algebraic genus of such a Klein surface is the rank of its free fundamental group. The real genus of a finite group \(G\) is the smallest algebraic genus of a bordered Klein surface on which \(G\) acts as a group of homeomorphisms (or equivalently diffeomorphisms, or automorphisms if one considers dianalytic structures on Klein surfaces). By work of various authors, the real genus is known for all finite abelian groups, for all products of a cyclic and a dihedral group or of two dihedral groups, and for all groups of order at most 63 with the exception of some groups of order 48. In the present paper, this gap is closed by computing the real genus of the remaining groups of order 48 (there are 52 groups of that order). The proof uses presentations of finite groups in combination with presentations or signatures of NEC-groups (non-Euclidean crystallographic groups): uniformizing Klein surfaces by NEC-groups, finite group-actions on Klein surfaces correspond to finite extensions between NEC-groups which then can be analysed.