The covering numbers of the sporadic simple groups (Q584391)

The covering number n and the extended covering number r of a finite, non-abelian, simple group G are the smallest positive integers n and r such that \(C^ n=G\) for all non-trivial conjugacy classes C of G resp. \(D_ 1...D_ r=G\) for all sequences \((D_ 1,...,D_ r)\) of nontrivial classes \(D_ 1,...,D_ r\) of G. There is an extension of Burnside's character formula for the product of two class sums in the group algebra which decides whether a class E is contained in a product \(D_ 1...D_ r\) [Products of Conjugacy Classes in Groups (Lect. Notes Math. 1112, 1985; Zbl 0561.20004)]. The author finds efficient criteria for the reduction of the number of computer evaluations of such character expressions and so obtains n and r for all sporadic simple groups and nine further simple groups. Always \(n+1=r\), except for \(D_ 4(3)\) where \(n=4\) and \(r=6\). The character tables were taken from the CAS library [\textit{J. Neubüser}, \textit{H. Pahlings}, \textit{W. Plesken} in: Computational Group Theory, 195-247 (1984; Zbl 0546.20001)].