English

On the commuting probability for subgroups of a finite group

Group Theory 2021-05-04 v2

Abstract

Let KK be a subgroup of a finite group GG. The probability that an element of GG commutes with an element of KK is denoted by Pr(K,G)Pr(K,G). Assume that Pr(K,G)ϵPr(K,G)\geq\epsilon for some fixed ϵ>0\epsilon>0. We show that there is a normal subgroup TGT\leq G and a subgroup BKB\leq K such that the indexes [G:T][G:T] and [K:B][K:B] and the order of the commutator subgroup [T,B][T,B] are ϵ\epsilon-bounded. This extends the well known theorem, due to P. M. Neumann, that covers the case where K=GK=G. We deduce a number of corollaries of this result. A typical application is that if KK is the generalized Fitting subgroup F(G)F^*(G) then GG has a class-2-nilpotent normal subgroup RR such that both the index [G:R][G:R] and the order of the commutator subgroup [R,R][R,R] are ϵ\epsilon-bounded. In the same spirit we consider the cases where KK is a term of the lower central series of GG, or a Sylow subgroup, etc.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2102.06983,
  title  = {On the commuting probability for subgroups of a finite group},
  author = {Eloisa Detomi and Pavel Shumyatsky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.06983},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

The earlier version has been considerably modified. Essentially, the present version is a new paper