Supercharacter Theories and Semidirect Products

Abstract

We describe the supercharacter theories of the semidirect product of H and K, $H\rtimes K$ in terms of the supercharacter theories of the direct product of H and K in the case when both H and K are Abelian groups. To do this we introduce the concept of a homomorphism of supercharacter theories. This provides a classification of the supercharacter theories of the dihedral groups of order 2m when m is odd using the known classification of the supercharacter theories of cyclic groups.