Regular Cayley maps for finite abelian groups (Q883146)

A regular Cayley map for a finite group \(A\) is an orientable map whose orientation-preserving automorphism group \(G\) acts regularly on the directed edge set (and thus has order twice the size of the underlying Cayley graph) and has a subgroup isomorphic to \(A\) which acts regularly on the vertex set. The authors consider the problem of determining which finite abelian groups have regular Cayley maps. The problem is purely algebraic, splitting naturally into ``balanced'' and ``unbalanced'' cases, determined by whether or not \(A\) is normal in \(G\). The algebraic setting relates to the skew morphisms and balanced Type I/Type II Cayley maps developed by \textit{M. Škoviera} and \textit{J. Širáň} [Discrete Math. 109, No. 1--3, 265--276 (1992; Zbl 0782.05028)]. The present authors show that many non-abelian groups (such as all finite simple ones) have balanced regular Cayley maps, and some abelian groups have only unbalanced regular Cayley maps. They study balanced regular Cayley maps, first for general groups and then for abelian groups of odd order and abelian 2-groups. A theorem of \textit{N. Itô} [Math. Z. 62, 400--401 (1955; Zbl 0064.25203)] is used to describe structurally the automorphism group of a regular Cayley map and then to construct infinitely many abelian 2-groups having no regular Cayley map. Since the work outlined above, Muzychuk (two preprints) has given necessary and sufficient conditions for an abelian group \(A\) to have a regular Cayley map, in both the balanced and the unbalanced cases. The present authors close by posing four questions that arise from their own work and are not answered directly by the work of Muzychuk.