Fixed-point free pairs of homomorphisms and nonabelian Hopf-Galois structures (Q713067)

It has been known for over twenty years that Galois extensions \(L/K\) with group \(\Gamma\) frequently also admit Hopf Galois structures with Hopf algebras \(H\) which are ``forms'' of \(K[G]\), where \(G\) is another finite group. A trivially necessary (far from sufficient) condition for this is that \(G\) and \(\Gamma\) have the same order. There is a description of such structures entirely in terms of group theory, and Byott found a modification of this description which is much easier to use: Hopf Galois structures correspond to (equivalence classes of) regular embeddings of \(\Gamma\) into the holomorph of \(G\). There are already many papers that discuss the number \(e(G,\Gamma)\) of such structures for a given pair \((G,\Gamma)\). Recently, Childs found a nice and fairly explicit way of generating regular embeddings \(\Gamma\to \mathrm{Hol}(G)\) from objects of somewhat lower complexity, to wit, from fixed-point free pairs of homomorphisms \((f,g)\) from \(\Gamma\) to \(G\). (The pair \((f,g)\) is called fixed-point free iff its difference kernel is trivial, i.e. \(f(\sigma)=g(\sigma)\) only if \(\sigma\) is the neutral element of \(\Gamma\).) This gives rise to a new number \(e_{fpf}(G,\Gamma)\), counting Hopf-Galois structures arising from fixed-point free pairs \((f,g)\). Of course, \(e_{fpf}(G,\Gamma)\leq e(G,\Gamma)\). One main result of the paper is a complete discussion of groups of order \(2pq\) for odd primes \(p\) and \(q\) with \(p=2q+1\). There are six of them, including the dihedral group \(D_{pq}\) and the cyclic group of order \(2pq\); let us denote them by \(G_1,\ldots, G_6\) (of course the paper gives full details) and put \(e(i,j)=e(G_i,G_j)\) and \(f(i,j)=e_{fpf}(G_i,G_j)\). We summarise the results that are given in Table 1 and 2 of the paper. For four pairs \((i,j)\), both entries \(e(i,j),f(i,j)\) are zero. For eleven pairs, \(e(i,j)\) and \(f(i,j)\) agree and are nonzero. For seventeen pairs, \(f(i,j)\) is zero while \(e(i,j)\) is positive; and finally for four pairs (only), the entries are different and both nonzero. In the final section of the paper, the authors find new examples of groups \(\Gamma\) which admit only Hopf Galois structures with \(G=\Gamma\). Let us call such groups ``steadfast''. Previously known examples include cyclic \(p\)-groups for \(p\not=2\), groups of order \(n\) where \(n\) is a Burnside number (that is, \(n\) is coprime to its totient function \(\phi(n)\)), and nonabelian simple groups. Almost no abelian groups \(\Gamma\) of even order are steadfast. Theorem 25 in the paper produces a new class of steadfast groups: the cyclic groups of order \(n=p^3q\), where \(p\) und \(q\) are distinct primes such that \(p\) is coprime to \(q-1\) and \(q\) is coprime to \(p^2-1\) but divides \(p^3-1\). There are quite a few groups of this order \(n\): first, the groups \(H\times \mathbb Z/q\mathbb Z\) with \(H\) one of the five groups of order \(p^3\), and then for every irreducible cubic polynomial \(f(x)\) over \(\mathbb F_p\) whose roots are \(q\)-th roots of unity, a semidirect product \((\mathbb Z/p)^{3} \rtimes \mathbb Z/q\), where the action of the right factor on the left factor is given by a matrix \(A\) with minimal polynomial \(f(x)\).