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Let $G$ be some (infinite) group, and let $Aut(G)$ be its automorphism group. Assume $H\leq Aut(G)$.

Under what conditions can I construct another group (or, say, graph), $\hat{G}$, such that $Aut(\hat{G})=H$? If so, is there an algorithm to do so?

I am pretty sure that this is not always possible - there are some groups which never occur as automorphism groups of other groups. I would therefore be interested to know if we can apply conditions on either $G$ or $H$ to get this to work.

I presume $H\lhd G$ is not sufficient, as then if $H$ is a centerless group which never occurs as an automorphism group of another group then we would have a counter-example (as $ Inn(G) \cong G $ if the centre of $G$ is trivial). So...what about characteristic?

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    Well, the *actual* problem I am working on gives me no information about the structure of this subgroup, but it does give me information about where it lies. Also, I know that there are results about what $H$ much look like to be the automorphism group of a group, but I have never come across anyone looking at what I just asked. I, personally, feel that it is interesting, and interesting enough for someone to have thought about it. Thus, I asked it here...2011-08-04

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No, a characteristic subgroup of an automorphism group of a group need not be isomorphic to the automorphism group of any group.

Here are two very well known infinite families of examples:

The cyclic group of order p (p an odd prime) is not the automorphism group of any group (such a group is abelian since its inner automorphism group is cyclic, but an abelian group either has inversion as an automorphism of order 2, or is an elementary abelian 2-group, and an elementary abelian 2-group either has trivial automorphism group or has a coordinate swap as an order 2 automorphism). However, the cyclic group of order p is a characteristic Sylow p-subgroup of AGL(1,p), which is the automorphism group of the dihedral group of order 2p and of itself. AGL(1,p) is the normalizer of a Sylow p-subgroup of the symmetric group on p-points.

The alternating group of degree n (n ≥ 9) is a characteristic, index 2 subgroup of its automorphism group, but is not itself the automorphism group of any group by Robinson (1982, MR678545).


At least as far as I understand it, automorphism groups of groups tend to be big and "full", and so it should not be surprising that many of their subgroups are not themselves automorphism groups of groups since they are "missing" something. For instance, a simple group cannot be an automorphism group unless it is complete; M12 is incomplete. Odd order cyclic groups do not work, since one is missing inversion (and indeed, the rest of AGL1).