Finite simple groups with short Galois orbits on conjugacy classes (Q2333377)

Let $Z(G)$ be the center of a group $G$. If $G$ is a finite group, then the group of central units of the integral group ring $\mathbb Z G$ is isomorphic, by the theorem of Berman and Higman, to $\langle1\rangle\times Z(G)\times R(G)$, where $R(G) = 1$ or $R(G)$ is a finitely generated torsion-free abelian subgroup of the units of $\mathbb Z G$ with elements of augmentation 1 (see [\textit{R. Sandling}, Lect. Notes Math. 882, 93--116 (1981; Zbl 0468.16013), Theorem 10], [\textit{V. A. Artamonov} and \textit{A. A. Bovdi}, J. Sov. Math. 57, No. 2, 2931--2958 (1991; Zbl 0732.16020); translation from Itogi Nauki Tekh., Ser. Algebra, Topologiya, Geom. 27, 3--43 (1989), 232, 1.1, p. 5] and [\textit{A. A. Bovdi}, Mul'tiplikativnaya gruppa tselochislennogo gruppovogo kol'tsa (Russian). Uzhgorod: Uzhgorodskij Gosudarstvennyj Universitet (1987; Zbl 0688.16007), Theorem 2.2, p. 23]). If $G$ is a finite group, then the rank of $R(G)$ is denoted by $r_Z(G)$ or simply by $r_Z$. Let $C$ be the set of the conjugacy classes of $G$. For a finite group $G$ let $f(G)$ denote the maximal length of an orbit of $G$ on $C$. The authors note, that a group $G$ is rational if and only if $f(G) = 1$. The main results of the paper are the following. ``Theorem 1.1. A finite simple group G satisfies $r_Z(G) = 1$ if and only if it is listed in Table 1.'' ``Theorem 1.2. There exists a universal constant sign of infinity in $c > 0$ such that whenever $G$ is a finite simple group then $k(G)^e< r_Z(G) < k(G)$ provided that $r_Z(G) > 1$ where $k(G)$ denotes the number of conjugacy classes of $G$. In particular, $_rZ(G)\rightarrow \infty$ as the orders of the finite simple groups $G$ tend to infinity.'' ``Theorem 1.3. Let $G$ be a finite simple group. Then $f(G)\leq 4$ if and only if $G$ is listed in Table 2.'' The tables 1 and 2 are given after Theorem 1.1 and Theorem 1.3, correspondingly. The authors list all finite simple groups $G$ for which the normalized group of central units of the integral group ring $\mathbb Z G$ is an infinite cyclic group.