Character degrees, conjugacy class sizes, and element orders: three primes (Q2043908)

There exist a large number of results giving information on the structure of a finite group in terms of the primes that divide the character degrees, the conjugacy class sizes or the element orders, and particularly, when one only considers two primes. In this paper, the authors show that several earlier results concerning two primes and solvable groups can be extended to the case of three primes, say \(p\), \(q\) and \(r\), and solvable \(\{p, q, r\}\)-groups. Let \(G\) be a solvable \(\{p, q, r\}\)-group. First, the authors extend the main result of [\textit{J. Zhang}, Algebra Colloq. 13, No. 4, 541--552 (2006; Zbl 1113.20011)] by proving that if \(p\), \(q\) and \(r\) divide the degree of some irreducible character of \(G\) but \(pqr\) does not divide any of such degrees, then the Fitting height \(h(G)\) of \(G\) is less or equal than \(11\). Furthermore, if \(G\) has odd order, then \(h(G)\leq 5\). With regard to conjugacy class sizes, the authors obtain an extension of a theorem of \textit{S. Dolfi} [J. Algebra 174, No. 3, 753--771 (1995; Zbl 0837.20031)]. Precisely, it is proved that if \(p\), \(q\) and \(r\) divide the size of some conjugacy class of \(G\), but \(pqr\) does not divide any class size, then the same conclusions as above for \(h(G)\) hold. On the other hand, the authors generalize a result concerning element orders: If \(p,q\) and \(r\) are primes dividing \(|G|\) but \(G\) has no element whose order is divisible by \(pqr\), then \(h(G)\leq 21\). Furthermore, if \(|G|\) is odd, then \(h(G)\leq 15\). The authors also show with an example that the main result of [\textit{G. Malle} et al., Math. Z. 252, No. 1, 223--230 (2006; Zbl 1083.20018)] does not admit a good generalization for three primes and solvable groups. The proofs only rely on general results on solvable groups and the authors themselves assert that the given bounds might be far from being best possible. They also show with examples that there are not straightforward generalizations of the above results for the case of four primes.