Products of locally dihedral subgroups. (Q420731)

A famous theorem of Itô states that any product of two Abelian groups is metabelian. On the other hand, very little is known about arbitrary groups factorized by two subgroups containing large Abelian subgroups. For instance, it was proved by \textit{J. S. Wilson} [Arch. Math. 54, No. 2, 117-118 (1990; Zbl 0698.20019)] that any residually finite product of two Abelian-by-finite groups is metabelian-by-finite. In the paper under review, the authors prove that an arbitrary product of two periodic locally dihedral groups is soluble. Here a group is called `locally dihedral' if it has a local system consisting of dihedral subgroups; in particular, a periodic group is locally dihedral if and only if it is a semidirect product of a locally cyclic normal subgroup \(A\) by a subgroup \(\langle x\rangle\) of order \(2\) such that \(a^x=a^{-1}\) for all elements \(a\) of \(A\).