Products of two groups containing cyclic subgroups of index at most \(2\). (Q2480702)

A famous theorem of N. Itô states that if a group \(G=AB\) is the product of two Abelian subgroups \(A\) and \(B\), then \(G\) is metabelian. A natural question related to Itô's theorem asks whether any group factorized by two Abelian-by-finite subgroups contains a metabelian subgroup of finite index; this is known to be the case for linear groups and for residually finite groups. In the paper under review, the authors prove that if the group \(G=AB\) is the product of two subgroups \(A\) and \(B\), each containing a cyclic subgroup of index at most \(2\), then \(G\) contains a metacyclic subgroup of finite index.