On the structure of some locally nilpotent groups without contranormal subgroups (Q2068340)

A subgroup \(H\) of a group \(G\) is contranormal in \(G\) if \(H^G=G\), a term introduced by \textit{J. S. Rose} [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 17, 447--469 (1967; Zbl 0153.03602); Math. Z. 106, 97--112 (1968; Zbl 0169.03402)]. Important examples of contranormal subgroups are abnormal subgroups. However, a locally nilpotent group contains no proper abnormal subgroups, whereas the locally dihedral \(2\)-group is a hypercentral group which contains a proper contranormal subgroup. It is easy to see that a finite group is nilpotent if and only if it has no proper contranormal subgroups. However in infinite groups there are non-nilpotent (even non locally nilpotent) examples with all proper subgroups subnormal and hence there are no proper contranormal subgroups in such a case. A natural question then is to determine what can be said concerning groups which have no proper contranormal subgroups. This question has been studied by various authors (see [\textit{L. A. Kurdachenko} et al., Commun. Algebra 37, No. 12, 4542--4557 (2009; Zbl 1192.20015); \textit{B. A. F. Wehrfritz}, Publ. Mat., Barc. 64, No. 1, 183--194 (2020; Zbl 1445.20030)], for example). In the current paper, this question is explored further. For example, the authors prove: Proposition A: Let \(G\), be a group, let \(L, K\) be normal subgroups of \(G\) such that \(L\) is a periodic locally nilpotent subgroup, \(L\leq K\) and \(K/L\) is finite. If \(G\) contains no proper contranormal subgroups, then \(K\) is locally nilpotent. This result itself has many interesting consequences. The authors go on to obtain more conditions on ``contranormal-free'' groups which imply nilpotency, as in the finite case. Overall this is a very interesting, informative paper with many useful techniques and results.