Bijections between group rings preserving character sums (Q5960281)

The authors continue to develop the landscape generated by the idea to find bijections \(\alpha : G\rightarrow H\) (\(G,H\) groups) such that if \(D\) is a difference set in \(G\) then \(\alpha (D)\) is a difference set in \(H\) to gain more insight into the existence of combinatorial objects in groups and in particular into the reason why there are more difference sets in abelian groups of low exponent and high rank than in those of high exponent and low rank. The paper uses character and algebraic number theory, stressing bijections preserving the absolute value of character sums. To give an idea of the results obtained we quote the last example: Let \(D\) be a difference set in \(G=\mathbb{Z}_{2^{d+2}}\times\mathbb{Z}_2^d\). Let \(P\) be an abelian group of order \(2^{d+2}\), and let \(f:G\rightarrow P\times\mathbb{Z}_2^d\) be a folding. Then \(f(D)\) is a difference set in \(P\times\mathbb{Z}_2^d\). Here (when \(P\) is a direct product of cyclic \(p\)-groups) a ``folding'' \(f:\mathbb{Z}_{p^n}\rightarrow P\) is defined by letting \(f(i)\) be the \(i\)th element of \(P\) in the lexicographic order.