Characterization of cyclic Schur groups

Abstract

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. Pöschel (1974) that given a prime $p\ge 5$ 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: $p^k$, $p{q}^k$, $2p{q}^k$, $pqr$, $2pqr$ where $p,q,r$ are distinct primes, and $k\ge 0$ is an integer.

the second version; the proof was substantially improved; 29 pages