Recovering information about a finite group from its subrack lattice (Q2029233)

A \textit{rack} \(R\) is a set with a binary operation \(\vartriangleright: R \times R \rightarrow R\) satisfying the following two axioms: (A.1) if \(a,b,c \in R\), then \(a \vartriangleright (b \vartriangleright c)=(a \vartriangleright b) \vartriangleright (a \vartriangleright c)\); (A.2) if \(a,c \in R\), then there is a unique \(b \in R\) such that \(a \vartriangleright b =c\). Let \(G\) be a group and for \(a,b \in G\) define \(a \vartriangleright b=b^{a}\). It is easy to verify that \((G, \vartriangleright)\) is a rack. Hence, every group is a rack. A \textit{subrack} of a rack \(R\) is a subset of \(R\) which is a rack under the operation inherited by \(R\). The set of all subracks of \(R\) form a partially ordered set under inclusion which is denoted by \(\mathcal{R}(R)\). The \textit{subrack lattice} of the group \(G\) is the partially ordered set \(\mathcal{R}(G)\) (with maximum element \(G\) and minimum element \(\emptyset\)). Over the years, a great effort has been done to study the relation between the structure of a group \(G\) and the partially ordered set \(\mathcal{L}(G)\) of subgroups of \(G\) (with maximum element \(G\) and minimum element \(\{ 1\}\)). For an overview see the monographs of \textit{M. Suzuki} [``Structure of a group and the structure of its lattice of subgroups'', in: Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete. Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag (1956; Zbl 0070.25406)] and of \textit{R. Schmidt} [Subgroup lattices of groups. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (1994; Zbl 0843.20003)]. The purpose of the paper under review is to study the same problem when \(\mathcal{L}(G)\) is replaced with \(\mathcal{R}(G)\). The main result obtained by the author is Theorem 3.3: If \(G\) is a finite nilpotent group of class \(c\), and if \(H\) is a group with \(\mathcal{R}(G) \simeq \mathcal{R}(H)\), then \(H\) is nilpotent of class \(c\). As a consequence it is proved that the subrack lattice \(\mathcal{R}(G)\) determines \(p\)-nilpotence of the group \(G\) if a certain condition is met (Theorem 4.5).