This is a followup to this previous question: Do homomorphisms H→Aut(K) that coincide at the level of Out(K) induce isomorphic semidirect products?
I am trying to understand why Sn doesn't seem to appear as a normal subgroup of a nontrivial semidirect product except when n=6. Two relevant facts: Sn is centerless when n≥3, and its outer automorphism group is trivial except when n=6. This raises the more general question:
If ϕ,ψ:H→Aut(K) induce the same map H→Out(K), and if K is centerless, then is it true that K⋊?
Answer
The answer is still no.
As an example, let K=A_5 and H = \langle a,b\mid a^4=b^2=1,ab=ba \rangle = C_4 \times C_2.
Choose \phi such that \phi(a) is conjugation by (1,2,3,4) and \phi(b)=1.
Choose \psi such that \psi(a) is conjugation by (1,2) and \psi(b) is conjugation by (1,2)(3,4).
Then \phi and \psi induce the same map to {\rm Out}(K), but the associated semidirect products are not isomorphic, essentially because \phi and \psi have different kernels. In fact the one with \phi has centre a Klein 4-group and the one with \psi has cyclic centre, which is similar to the example I gave for the previous question.
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