Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
A mapping ϕ from one group, G, into another, H, is said to be a semi-homomorphism of G if ϕ(aba) = ϕ(a) ϕ(b) ϕa) for all a, b ∊G. Clearly any homomorphism or anti-homomorphism is a semi-homomorphism; the converse, however, need not be true in general. It is perfectly clear what one intends by a semi-isomorphism or semi-automorphism.
Our purpose here is to show that for a rather general situation a semi-homomorphism turns out to be a homomorphism or an anti-homomorphism. In (2) we proved that any semi-automorphism of a simple group which contains an element of order 4 must automatically be either an automorphism or an anti-automorphism.
In the first version of this paper the results were proved for the case of semi-automorphisms of simple groups. The results were generalized to the present situation while the author was a guest at the Mathematics Research Institute of the E.T.H. in Zürich.
This work was supported by a grant from the Army Research Office, ARO(D), at the University of Chicago.