TY - JOUR
T1 - A new solvability criterion for finite groups
AU - Dolfi, Silvio
AU - Guralnick, Robert M.
AU - Herzog, Marcel
AU - Praeger, Cheryl E.
N1 - Funding Information:
The first author was partially supported by the MIUR project ‘Teoria dei gruppi e applicazioni’. The second author was supported by NSF grant DMS 1001962. The fourth author was supported by Federation Fellowship FF0776186 of the Australian Research Council.
PY - 2012/4
Y1 - 2012/4
N2 - In 1968, John Thompson proved that a finite group G is solvable if and only if every 2-generator subgroup of G is solvable. In this paper, we prove that solvability of a finite group G is guaranteed by a seemingly weaker condition: G is solvable if, for all conjugacy classes C and D of G consisting of elements of prime power order, there exist x∈C and y∈D for which 〈x, y〉 is solvable. We also prove the following property of finite nonabelian simple groups, which is the key tool for our proof of the solvability criterion: if G is a finite nonabelian simple group, then there exist two prime divisors a and b of |G| such that, for all elements x, y∈G with |x|=a and |y|=b, the subgroup 〈x, y〉 is not solvable. Further, using a recent result of Guralnick and Malle, we obtain a similar membership criterion for any family of finite groups closed under forming subgroups, quotients and extensions.
AB - In 1968, John Thompson proved that a finite group G is solvable if and only if every 2-generator subgroup of G is solvable. In this paper, we prove that solvability of a finite group G is guaranteed by a seemingly weaker condition: G is solvable if, for all conjugacy classes C and D of G consisting of elements of prime power order, there exist x∈C and y∈D for which 〈x, y〉 is solvable. We also prove the following property of finite nonabelian simple groups, which is the key tool for our proof of the solvability criterion: if G is a finite nonabelian simple group, then there exist two prime divisors a and b of |G| such that, for all elements x, y∈G with |x|=a and |y|=b, the subgroup 〈x, y〉 is not solvable. Further, using a recent result of Guralnick and Malle, we obtain a similar membership criterion for any family of finite groups closed under forming subgroups, quotients and extensions.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84858391006&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1112/jlms/jdr041
DO - 10.1112/jlms/jdr041
M3 - ???researchoutput.researchoutputtypes.contributiontojournal.article???
AN - SCOPUS:84858391006
VL - 85
SP - 269
EP - 281
JO - Journal of the London Mathematical Society
JF - Journal of the London Mathematical Society
SN - 0024-6107
IS - 2
ER -