On finite groups whose Sylow subgroups have a bounded number of generators. (Q535128)

The aim of this paper is to study the influence of the number of generators of the Sylow subgroups of a finite group on the structure of the group. The author is interested in finding suitable characteristic subgroups of bounded index and in bounds for the number of non-Abelian composition factors. Let \(G\) be a finite non-nilpotent group such that every Sylow subgroup of \(G\) is generated by at most \(\delta\) elements, and such that \(\lambda\) is the largest prime dividing \(|G|\). Let \(\delta'\) be the largest integer such that \(\delta'\) is not greater than the number of generators of two Sylow subgroups for at least two different primes. The author obtains (Theorem~A) that if \(N\) is maximal with respect to being characteristic and \(G/N\) not nilpotent, then the quotient \(G/N\) is a semidirect product of \(S\) by \(H\), where \(S\) is an elementary Abelian \(p\)-group for some prime \(p\) and \(H\) is a nilpotent \(p'\)-group acting faithfully on \(S\) by conjugation, or \(G/N\) has a characteristic subgroup that is the direct product of at most \(\delta\delta'\) copies of a non-Abelian finite simple group. He obtains bounds for the order of \(G/N\). In particular, he gets a bound for the index of the Fitting subgroup (Theorem~B). He also obtains (Theorem~C) that for two different primes \(p\) and \(q\), the number of composition factors of \(G\) of order divisible by \(pq\) is bounded by a function of \(p\), \(q\), the least number of generators of a Sylow \(p\)-subgroup and the least number of generators of a Sylow \(q\)-subgroup. The total number of non-Abelian composition factors of \(G\) is bounded by a function of the number of generators of the Sylow \(2\)-, \(3\)-, and \(5\)-subgroups. There are consequences for profinite groups. The proofs of some of the results of the paper depend on the classification of finite simple groups. The author identifies these results. He also presents some examples which show the obstacles to weaken the hypotheses.