Groups with a solvable subgroup of prime-power index (Q2659836)

The purpose of the paper under review is the study of groups that contain a solvable subgroup of finite prime-power index. Let \(\pi_{0}=\{2,7,13 \} \cup \{p \mid p \text{ is a Fermat prime} \}\), the main result proved by the authors is Theorem 1: Let \(G\) be a finite group, let \(p\) be a prime number and assume that \(G\) contains a solvable subgroup of index \(p^{\alpha}\) for some \(\alpha \geq 1\). Then \(G\) contains a solvable Hall \(p'\)-subgroup and the following assertions are valid. (1) If \(p \not \in \pi_{0}\), then \(G\) is solvable. (2) If \(p \not \in \{7,13\}\), then the Hall \(p'\)-subgroups of \(G\) are solvable. It is interesting to note that the simple group \(G=\mathrm{PSL}(2,7) \simeq \mathrm{PSL}(3,2)\) has a \(\{3,7\}\)-Hall subgroup \(H\simeq C_{7} \rtimes C_{3}\) of index \(8\) and a \(\{2,3\}\)-Hall subgroup \(K\simeq S_{4}\) of index \(7\), moreover in \(G\) there are two conjugate classes of subgroups which are isomorphic to \(S_{4}\) (see Lemma 6 for a list of examples showing the necessity of hypotheses of Theorem 1). A consequence of Theorem 1 is Corollary 2: If \(p\) is a prime such that \(p \not \in \pi_{0}\) and \(G\) is a not necessarily finite group with a solvable subgroup of \(p\)-power index, then \(G\) is solvable. Let \(G\) be a group and \(H \leq G\) be a subgroup with \(|G:H|=m\), then it is well known that \(|G : H_{G}| \leq m!\) and this bound is, in general, the best possible. Hence, if \(H\) is solvable and \(\mathrm{Rad}(G)\) denote the solvable radical of \(G\), then \(|G: \mathrm{Rad}(G)| \leq m!\). In a particular case, the authors manage to improve this bound in an essential way. In fact, they prove the following interesting result (Theorem 4): Let \(G\) be a not necessarily finite group, let \(p\) be a prime number and assume that \(G\) contains a solvable subgroup \(H\) of index \(m=p^{\alpha}\) for some \(\alpha \geq 1\). Then \(|G:\mathrm{Rad}(G)| \leq m^{5}\), moreover if \(p \not =13\), then \(|G:\mathrm{Rad}(G)| \leq m^{4}\). The reviewer points out that the bound in Theorem 4 can be improved to \(|G:\mathrm{Rad}(G)| \leq (2 p^{4})^{\alpha}\) (see item 6 in Lemma 6 and item 2 in Corollary 7).