A family of permutation groups with exponentially many non-conjugated regular elementary abelian subgroups

Given a prime $p$, we construct a permutation group containing at least $p^{p-2}$ non-conjugated regular elementary abelian subgroups of order $p^3$. This gives the first example of a permutation group with exponentially many non-conjugated regular subgroups.

On separability problem for circulant S-rings

A Schur ring (S-ring) over a group $G$ is called separable if every of its similaritities is induced by isomorphism. We establish a criterion for an S-ring to be separable in the case when the group $G$ is cyclic. Using this criterion, we prove that any S-ring over a cyclic $p$-group is separable and that the class of separable circulant S-rings is closed with respect to duality.

Coset closure of a circulant S-ring and schurity problem

Let $G$ be a finite group. There is a natural Galois correspondence between the permutation groups containing $G$ as a regular subgroup, and the Schur rings (S-rings) over~$G$. The problem we deal with in the paper, is to characterize those S-rings that are closed under this correspondence, when the group $G$ is cyclic (the schurity problem for circulant S-rings). It is proved that up to a natural reduction, the characteristic property of such an S-ring is to be a certain algebraic fusion of its coset closure introduced and studied in the paper. Basing on this characterization we show that the schurity problem is equivalent to the consistency of a modular linear system associated with a circulant S-ring under consideration. As a byproduct we show that a circulant S-ring is Galois closed if and only if so is its dual.

On schurity of finite abelian groups

A finite group $G$ is called a Schur group, if any Schur ring over $G$ is associated in a natural way with a subgroup of $Sym(G)$ that contains all right translations. Recently, the authors have completely identified the cyclic Schur groups. In this paper it is shown that any abelian Schur group belongs to one of several explicitly given families only. In particular, any non-cyclic abelian Schur group of odd order is isomorphic to $Z_3times Z_{3^k}$ or $Z_3times Z_3times Z_p$ where $kge 1$ and $p$ is a prime. In addition, we prove that $Z_2times Z_2times Z_p$ is a Schur group for every prime $p$.

Characterization of cyclic Schur groups

A finite group $G$ is called a Schur group, if any Schur ring over $G$ is the transitivity module of a permutation group on the set $G$ containing the regular subgroup of all right translations. It was proved by R. Poschel (1974) that given a prime $pge 5$ a $p$-group is Schur if and only if it is cyclic. We prove that a cyclic group of order $n$ is a Schur group if and only if $n$ belongs to one of the following five (partially overlapped) families of integers: $p^k$, $pq^k$, $2pq^k$, $pqr$, $2pqr$ where $p,q,r$ are distinct primes, and $kge 0$ is an integer.

Schurity of S-rings over a cyclic group and generalized wreath product of permutation groups

The generalized wreath product of permutation groups is introduced. By means of it we study the schurity problem for S-rings over a cyclic group $G$ and the automorphism groups of them. Criteria for the schurity and non-schurity of the generalized wreath product of two such S-rings are obtained. As a byproduct of the developed theory we prove that $G$ is a Schur group whenever the total number $Omega(n)$ of prime factors of the integer $n=|G|$ is at most 3. Moreover, we describe the structure of a non-schurian S-ring over $G$ when $Omega(n)=4$. The latter result implies in particular that if $n=p^3q$ where $p$ and $q$ are primes, then $G$ is a Schur group.

Schur rings over a product of Galois rings

The recently developed theory of Schur rings over a finite cyclic group is generalized to Schur rings over a ring R being a product of Galois rings of coprime characteristics. It is proved that if the characteristic of R is odd, then as in the cyclic group case any pure Schur ring over R is the tensor product of a pure cyclotomic ring and Schur rings of rank 2 over non-fields. Moreover, it is shown that in contrast to the cyclic group case there are non-pure Schur rings over R that are not generalized wreath products.

Normal cyclotomic schemes over a finite commutative ring

We study cyclotomic association schemes over a finite commutative ring $R$ with identity. The main interest for us is to identify the normal cyclotomic schemes $C$, i.e. those for which $Aut(C)$ is a subgroup of the one-dimensional affine semilinear group over $R$. The problem is reduced to the case when the ring $R$ is local in which a necessary condition of normality in terms of the subgroup of $R^times$ defining $C$, is given. This condition is proved to be sufficient for a class of local rings including the Galois rings of odd characteristic.

A new look at the Burnside-Schur theorem

The famous Burnside-Schur theorem states that every primitive finite permutation group containing a regular cyclic subgroup is either 2-transitive or isomorphic to a subgroup of a 1-dimensional affine group of prime degree. It is known that this theorem can be expressed as a statement on Schur rings over a finite cyclic group. Generalizing the latters we introduce Schur rings over a finite commutative ring and prove an analog of this statement for them. Besides, the finite local commutative rings are characterized in the permutation group terms.