The size of the solvable residual in finite groups. (Q2469766)

Let \(G\) be a nontrivial finite group, let \(F(G)\) denote the Fitting subgroup of \(G\) and let \(\text{Res}(G)\) denote the last term of the derived series of \(G\). The main result of this paper asserts that if \(F(G)=1\), then \(|\text{Res}(G)|>|G|^k\), where \(k\) is a (logarithmic) constant close to 0.7003. In particular, the condition \(F(G)=1\) ensures that \(|\text{Res}(G)|>|G|^{\frac 23}\) and it is shown by examples that the condition \(F(G)=1\) cannot be omitted. The constant \(k\) is also the best possible. The proof proceeds by induction followed by a technical result (Proposition D) which bounds the order of \(\text{Out}(S)\) for simple nonabelian groups \(S\) in terms of \(|S|\).