On the number of conjugacy classes of a permutation group. (Q2347884)

The main result of the paper under review is that any permutation group of degree \(n\geq 4\) has at most \(5^{(n-1)/3}\) conjugacy classes. This improves the formerly known best bound of \(3^{(n-1)/2}\) which had been obtained by the second author [in J. Group Theory 8, No. 3, 273-289 (2005; Zbl 1086.20002)]. To prove the main result, the authors first show that for any subgroup \(H\) of a primitive permutation group \(G\) of degree \(n\) with \(G\not\in\{A_n,S_n\}\), the number of conjugacy classes of \(H\) is bounded above by \(p(n)\), the number of partitions of \(n\). This result is then used to give a general upper bound for the number of conjugacy classes of a transitive permutation group from knowledge of the partition function, and that result finally is used to derive the main result. The proofs depend on CFSG.