No label defined (Q4943097)

The article under review is based on a talk the author gave at the 43rd Annual Conference of the Australian Mathematical Society, and for which he received the B.~H.~Neumann award for the most outstanding presentation. The paper is concerned with the following question: what is the smallest order of a finite \(p\)-group whose soluble length is \(l\)? For instance for \(l=2\) this amounts to asking what is the order of the smallest non-Abelian \(p\)-group, and this is well-known to be \(p^3\). When \(l=3\) the smallest order is \(p^6\) for \(p\geq 5\), and \(p^7\) for \(p=2,3\). N.~Blackburn has shown in his PhD thesis that a finite \(p\)-group of soluble length \(4\) has order at least \(p^{14}\). Recently \textit{S.~Evans-Riley, M.~F.~Newman} and the author [Bull. Aust. Math. Soc. 59, No. 2, 343-346 (1999)] have shown that this bound is sharp for \(p\geq 5\). The bounds for the order of a finite \(p\)-group with a given soluble length are built from bounds on the individual factors of the derived series. As \textit{N.~Blackburn} has shown [Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 101, 193-196 (1986; Zbl 0622.20011)] that if \(G''\neq 1\) in the finite \(p\)-group \(G\), then \(G'/G''\) has order at least \(p^3\), the author has studied in his PhD thesis at the Australian National University the case when \(G'/G''\) has order exactly \(p^3\). This assumption has strong consequences on the structure of \(G\), which are described in part in the paper under review. The author makes use of the Lie rings method; his results are also of direct interest in the context of Lie algebras.