English

A commutator description of the solvable radical of a finite group

Group Theory 2008-01-03 v2

Abstract

We are looking for the smallest integer k>1 providing the following characterization of the solvable radical R(G) of any finite group G: R(G) coincides with the collection of all g such that for any k elements a_1,a_2,...,a_k the subgroup generated by the elements g, a_iga_i^{-1}, i=1,...,k, is solvable. We consider a similar problem of finding the smallest integer l>1 with the property that R(G) coincides with the collection of all g such that for any l elements b_1,b_2,...,b_l the subgroup generated by the commutators [g,b_i], i=1,...,l, is solvable. Conjecturally, k=l=3. We prove that both k and l are at most 7. In particular, this means that a finite group G is solvable if and only if in each conjugacy class of G every 8 elements generate a solvable subgroup.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.math/0610983,
  title  = {A commutator description of the solvable radical of a finite group},
  author = {Nikolai Gordeev and Fritz Grunewald and Boris Kunyavskii and Eugene Plotkin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:math/0610983},
  year   = {2008}
}

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43 pages