NONINNER AUTOMORPHISMS OF FINITE p-GROUPS LEAVING THE CENTER ELEMENTWISE FIXED

A longstanding conjecture asserts that every finite nonabelian p-group admits a noninner automorphism of order p. Let G be a finite nonabelian p-group. It is known that if G is regular or of nilpotency class 2 or the commutator subgroup of G is cyclic, or G=Z(G) is powerful, then G has a noninner automorphism of order p leaving either the center Z(G) or the Frattini subgroup (G) of G elementwise fixed. In this note, we prove that the latter noninner automorphism can be chosen so that it leaves Z(G) elementwise fixed.