On the Fitting length of a soluble product of nilpotent groups (Q1193267)

A famous theorem of N. Itô implies that the Fitting length of a product of two abelian groups is at most two. On the other hand, a finite product of two nilpotent groups may have arbitrary large Fitting length. The authors show that under certain finiteness conditions a soluble product of an abelian and a nilpotent subgroup has Fitting length at most three. This follows from the following results. Let the soluble group \(G=AB\) with finite abelian section rank be the product of an abelian subgroup \(A\) and a nilpotent subgroup \(B\). If \(R\) is the Hirsch-Plotkin radical of \(G\), then \(AR\) is a normal subgroup of \(G\); furthermore also \(AF\) is a normal subgroup of \(G\) where \(F\) is the Fitting subgroup of \(G\); provided that the set of primes \(p\) for which there is an element of order \(p\) in \(G\) is finite. -- For the proof of this first the finite case is considered and then this is extended to general soluble groups with finite abelian section rank. Here near splitting theorems over certain modules are required.