English

On a bound of Cocke and Venkataraman

Group Theory 2021-05-05 v1

Abstract

Let G be a finite group with exactly k elements of largest possible order m. Let q(m) be the product of gcd(m,4) and the odd prime divisors of m. We show that |G|\le q(m)k^2/\phi(m) where \phi denotes Euler's totient function. This strengthens a recent result of Cocke and Venkataraman. As an application we classify all finite groups with k<36. This is motivated by a conjecture of Thompson and unifies several partial results in the literature.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2105.01301,
  title  = {On a bound of Cocke and Venkataraman},
  author = {Benjamin Sambale and Philipp Wellmann},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.01301},
  year   = {2021}
}

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10 pages