Strongly Real Special 2-Groups

Abstract

Strongly real groups and totally orthogonal groups form two important subclasses of real groups. In this article we give a characterization of strongly real special 2-groups. This characterization is in terms of quadratic maps over fields of characteristic 2. We then provide examples of groups which are in one subclass and not the other. It is a conjecture of Tiep that such examples are not possible for finite simple groups