Skew-morphisms of elementary abelian 𝑝-groups

Abstract

A skew-morphism of a finite group 𝐺 is a permutation 𝜎 on 𝐺 fixing the identity element, and for which there exists an integer-valued function 𝜋 on 𝐺 such that σ ⁢ ( x ⁢ y ) = σ ⁢ ( x ) ⁢ σ π ⁢ ( x ) ⁢ ( y ) \sigma(xy)=\sigma(x)\sigma^{\pi(x)}(y) for all x , y ∈ G x,y\in G . It is known that, for a given skew-morphism 𝜎 of 𝐺, the product of the left regular representation of 𝐺 with ⟨ σ ⟩ \langle\sigma\rangle forms a permutation group on 𝐺, called a skew-product group of 𝐺. In this paper, we study the skew-product groups 𝑋 of elementary abelian 𝑝-groups Z p n \mathbb{Z}_{p}^{n} . We prove that 𝑋 has a normal Sylow 𝑝-subgroup and determine the structure of 𝑋. In particular, we prove that Z p n ⊲ X \mathbb{Z}_{p}^{n}\lhd X if p = 2 p=2 and either Z p n ⊲ X \mathbb{Z}_{p}^{n}\lhd X or ( Z p n ) X ≅ Z p n − 1 (\mathbb{Z}_{p}^{n})_{X}\cong\mathbb{Z}_{p}^{n-1} if 𝑝 is an odd prime. As an application, for n ≤ 3 n\leq 3 , we prove that 𝑋 is isomorphic to a subgroup of the affine group AGL ⁢ ( n , p ) \mathrm{AGL}(n,p) and enumerate the number of skew-morphisms of Z p n \mathbb{Z}_{p}^{n} .