Finite metacyclic groups as active sums of cyclic subgroups

Abstract

The notion of active sum provides an analogue for groups of that of direct sum for abelian groups. One natural question then is which groups are the active sum of cyclic subgroups. Many groups have been found to give a positive answer to this question, while the case of finite metacyclic groups remained unknown. In this note we show that every finite metacyclic group can be recovered as the active sum of a discrete family of cyclic subgroups.