The average degree of an irreducible character of a finite group. (Q375755)

Let \(G\) be a finite group, and let \(\mathrm{acd}(G)\) denote the average of the degrees of the irreducible characters of \(G\). The paper under review continues the (still very young) study of what \(\mathrm{acd}(G)\) reveals about the structure of the group. The following results are obtained. If \(\mathrm{acd}(G)\leq 3\), then \(G\) is solvable. (This relies on CFSG and confirms a 2011 conjecture of Magaard and Tong-Viet.) If \(\mathrm{acd}(G)\leq\tfrac{3}{2}\), then \(G\) is supersolvable. If \(\mathrm{acd}(G)\leq\tfrac{4}{3}\), then \(G\) is nilpotent. The latter two bounds are best possible, as \(A_4\) and \(S_3\) (resp.) show, whereas the authors conjecture that the first result can be improved as follows: If \(\mathrm{acd}(G)<16/5=\mathrm{acd}(A_5)\), then \(G\) is solvable. For odd order groups the above results are even true if the numbers 3, \(\tfrac{3}{2}\), \(\tfrac{4}{3}\) are replaced by \(\infty\), \(\tfrac{27}{11}\), \(\tfrac{3p}{p+2}\) (\(p\) being the smallest prime dividing \(|G|\)), respectively. Moreover, concerning large values of \(\mathrm{acd}(G)\), an example is constructed which shows that if \(p\) is a prime, then \(\mathrm{acd}(G)\) is unboundedly large as \(G\) runs over all \(p\)-groups.