Morphic groups

A group G is called morphic if every endomorphism α:G→G for which Gα is normal in G satisfies G/Gα≅ker(α). This concept originated in a 1976 paper of Gertrude Ehrlich characterizing when the endomorphism ring of a module is unit regular. The concept has been extensively studied in module and ring theory, and this paper investigates the idea in the category of groups. After developing their basic properties, we characterize the morphic groups among the dihedral groups and the groups whose normal subgroups form a finite chain. We investigate when a direct product of morphic groups is again morphic, prove that a finite nilpotent group is morphic if and only if its Sylow subgroups are morphic, and present some results for the case where a p-group is morphic.