On Automorphisms of Finite $p$-groups

Let $G$ be a finite non-cyclic $p$-group of order at least $p^3$. If $G$ has an abelian maximal subgroup, or if $G$ has an elementary abelian centre with $C_G(Z(\Phi(G))) \ne \Phi(G)$, then $|G|$ divides $|\text{Aut}(G)|$.

It is proved in [J. Group Theory, {\bf 10} (2007), 859-866] that if $G$ is a finite $p$-group such that $(G,Z(G))$ is a Camina pair, then $|G|$ divides $|\Aut(G)|$. We give a very short and elementary proof of this result.

A p-group G is p-central if the central quotient has exponent p. We prove that for a subset of finite p-central p-groups, the order of the group G divides the order of Aut(G).

Let $G$ be a finite $p$-group and let Aut$(G)$ denote the full automorphism group of $G$. In the recent past, there has been interest in finding necessary and sufficient conditions on $G$ such that certain subgroups of Aut$(G)$ are equal. We prove a technical lemma and, as a consequence, obtain some new results and short and alternate proofs of some known results of this type.

This survey on the automorphism groups of finite p-groups focuses on three major topics: explicit computations for familiar finite p-groups, such as the extraspecial p-groups and Sylow p-subgroups of Chevalley groups; constructing p-groups with specified automorphism groups; and the discovery of finite p-groups whose automorphism groups are or are not p-groups themselves. The material is presented with varying levels of detail, with some of the examples given in complete deta...

In this short survey article, we try to list maximum number of known results on class preserving automorphisms of finite $p$-groups. We conclude the survey with some interesting (at least for the author) open problems on this topic.

An automorphism of a group is called outer if it is not an inner automorphism. Let $G$ be a finite $p$-group. Then for every outer $p$-automorphism $\phi$ of $G$ the subgroup $C_G(\phi)=\{x\in G \;|\; x^\phi=x\}$ has order $p$ if and only if $G$ is of order at most $p^2$.

We classify all finite $p$-groups $G$ for which |$Aut_{c}(G)$| attains its maximum value, where $Aut_{c}(G)$ denotes the group of all class preserving automorphisms of $G$ .

Let $G\in\{p,q\}^*$ be a finite group with trivial center, where $p,q\in\pi(G)$ and $p>q>5$. In the present paper it is proved that $|G|_{\{p,q\}}=|G||_{\{p,q\}}$; in particular $C_G(g)\cap C_G(h)=1$ for every $p$-element $g$ and every $q$-element $h$.

We obtain certain results on a finite $p$-group whose central automorphisms are all class preserving. In particular, we prove that if $G$ is a finite $p$-group whose central automorphisms are all class preserving, then $d(G)$ is even, where $d(G)$ denotes the number of elements in any minimal generating set for $G$. As an application of these results, we obtain some results regarding finite $p$-groups whose automorphisms are all class preserving. In particular, we prove that ...