\(\mathbb Z_{n}\)-graded Lie rings (Q1770493)

\textit{J. Thompson} [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 45, 578--581 (1959; Zbl 0086.25101)] proved that a finite group \(G\) is nilpotent if it possesses a fixed point free automorphism of prime order \(p\). An automorphism is said to be fixed point free if it fixes only the identity. \textit{G. Higman} [J. Lond. Math. Soc. 32, 321--334 (1957; Zbl 0079.03203)] showed that there exists a function \(f\) (which he did not make explicit) such that the nilpotence class of \(G\) is bound by \(f(p)\), and gave examples of nilpotence class \((p^{2}-1)/4\). Work of Higman, B. Scimem and M. Favaretto shows that this is as large as possible for \(p = 3, 5, 7, 11\). \textit{V.A. Kreknin} and \textit{A.I. Kostrikin} [Sov. Math., Dokl. 4, 683--685 (1963; Zbl 0134.03604), Sov. Math., Dokl. 4, 355--358 (1963; Zbl 0125.28902)] gave the first general, explicit bounds for the nilpotence class. They started by reducing the problem to bounding the nilpotence class of a \(\mathbb Z_{p}\)-graded Lie ring \(L\) with \(L_{0} = 0\), and then went on by giving first a bound on the derived length of \(L\) in terms of \(p\), and then a bound on the nilpotence class of \(L\) in terms of \(p\) and the derived length. In the paper under review the authors improve upon these bounds. For a \(\mathbb Z_{n}\)-graded Lie ring (\(n\) any positive integer) they provide the bound \(2^{n-4} + \lfloor \log_{2}(n-1) \rfloor\) (the previous one was \(2^{n-1} - 1\)) for the derived length of \(L\), and show that this can be reduced to \(g(p) = 2^{p-5} + \lfloor \log_{2}(p-3) \rfloor + 2\) if \(n = p\) is prime. As a consequence, they obtain the bound \(((p-2)^{g(p)} - 1)/(p-3)\) for the nilpotence class of a \(\mathbb Z_{p}\)-graded Lie ring \(L\) with \(L_{0} = 0\). This improves upon the previous bounds \(((p-1)^{s} - 1)/(p-2)\) of Kreknin and Kostrikin, and \((p-1)^{s-1}\) of \textit{T. Meixner} [Arch. Math. 35, 497--500 (1980; Zbl 0455.20021)]; here \(s\) is the derived length of \(L\).