Character groups of metacyclic groups (Q6862895)

The paper studies character quasigroups and character groups associated with finite groups, viewed as a non-abelian analogue of Pontryagin duality. Starting from the weighted character quasigroup defined on the set of irreducible characters of a finite group, the author recalls that such weighted quasigroups always lift to quasigroups, while the existence of a group structure on a lift is not guaranteed in general. The main goal is to analyze this problem for metacyclic groups.\N\NA metacyclic group is presented as \(M(k,l,m,n)=\langle x,y \mid y^m=x^l,\ x^n=1,\ yxy^{-1}=x^k\rangle\), with \(\gcd(n,k)=1\) and congruences \(k^m\equiv 1\pmod n\) and \(l(k-1)\equiv 0\pmod n\). For such groups, the irreducible characters are described explicitly and their products are computed in terms of combinatorial data \(S(a,b,c)\) attached to the action of a cyclic subgroup. Using these formulas, the paper characterizes balanced covers of the associated weighted character quasigroup and derives necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of character groups.