The structure of automorphic loops

Abstract: Automorphic loops are loops in which all inner mappings are automorphisms. This variety of loops includes, for instance, groups and commutative Moufang loops. We study uniquely 2-divisible automorphic loops, particularly automorphic loops of odd order, from the point of view of the associated Bruck loops (motivated by Glauberman's work on uniquely 2-divisible Moufang loops) and the associated Lie rings (motivated by a construction of Wright). We prove that every automorphic loop $Q$ of odd order is solvable, contains an element of order $p$ for every prime $p$ dividing $|Q|$, and $|S|$ divides $|Q|$ for every subloop $S$ of $Q$. There are no finite simple nonassociative commutative automorphic loops, and there are no finite simple nonassociative automorphic loops of order less than 2500. We show that if $Q$ is a finite simple nonassociative automorphic loop then the socle of the multiplication group of $Q$ is not regular. The existence of a finite simple nonassociative automorphic loop remains open. Let $p$ be an odd prime. Automorphic loops of order $p$ or $p^2$ are groups, but there exist nonassociative automorphic loops of order $p^3$, some with trivial nucleus (center) and of exponent $p$. We construct nonassociative "dihedral" automorphic loops of order $2n$ for every $n>2$, and show that there are precisely $p-2$ nonassociative automorphic loops of order $2p$, all of them dihedral.