Orthogonal groups of minimal Witt index generated by three involutions (Q1184493)

Involutions play a prominent role in modern group theory since the simple non-abelian groups are generated by involutions. Thus it is an interesting problem to determine the number of involutions needed to generate a given (simple) group. Since two involutions generate a dihedral group, a simple group cannot be generated by less than three involutions. In fact, many simple groups have three generating involutions. In her paper the author shows that also the orthogonal groups of minimal Witt index \(\Omega^ -(2\ell + 2,q)\) and their corresponding simple groups \(P\Omega^ -(2\ell + 2,q)\) with \(q\) odd and \(\ell \geq 3\) are generated by three involutions. The generating involutions are given explicitly.