A commutator description of the solvable radical of a finite group
Author(s) -
Nikolai Gordeev,
Fritz Grunewald,
Boris Kunyavskiı̆,
Eugene Plotkin
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
groups geometry and dynamics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.05
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1661-7215
pISSN - 1661-7207
DOI - 10.4171/ggd/32
Subject(s) - mathematics , commutator , solvable group , commutator subgroup , group (periodic table) , pure mathematics , algebra over a field , finite group , normal subgroup , abelian group , physics , lie conformal algebra , quantum mechanics
We are looking for the smallest integer k>1 providing the followingcharacterization 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 elementsa_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 smallestinteger l>1 with the property that R(G) coincides with the collection of all gsuch that for any l elements b_1,b_2,...,b_l the subgroup generated by thecommutators [g,b_i], i=1,...,l, is solvable. Conjecturally, k=l=3. We provethat both k and l are at most 7. In particular, this means that a finite groupG is solvable if and only if in each conjugacy class of G every 8 elementsgenerate a solvable subgroup.
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