Products of finite groups. (Q607637)

This monograph presents, at a level suitable for advanced graduates and researchers, a fairly complete introduction to the study of finite groups factorized as a product of subgroups (it can be used in conjunction with the book of \textit{B. Amberg, S. Franciosi} and \textit{F. de Giovanni} [Products of groups. Oxford Mathematical Monographs. Oxford: Clarendon Press (1992; Zbl 0774.20001)]). The first two chapters of the book are introductory: Chapter 1 (Prerequisites) gives a background in the necessary aspects of group theory; in Chapter 2 (Groups whose subnormal subgroups are normal, permutable or Sylow-permutable) the authors introduce some classes of groups defined by means of certain permutability conditions. Chapter 3 (Product of nilpotent groups) is devoted to groups factorized by two nilpotent groups with particular emphasis on products of Abelian groups and Hall-Higman type results. Chapter 4 (Totally and mutually permutable products of groups -- structural results), which forms the core of the book, and Chapter 5 (Totally and mutually permutable products and classes of groups) are devoted to the study of the subgroup structure of pairwise mutually or totally permutable products. The preface clearly describes the topics treated in this good book, with several interesting historical remarks: ``The central theme of this book is the structural study of finite groups which can be factorized as a product of finitely many pairwise permutable subgroups. The origin of the theory can be traced back to the year 1903, when Burnside published his well-known \(p^\alpha\)-lemma; he discovered that a finite group cannot be simple if it factorizes as a product of a Sylow subgroup and the centralizer of a non-trivial element. [\dots] But it was a short paper of Itô in 1955 which set the theory in motion. He shows that any (not necessarily finite) group is metabelian whenever it is the product of two Abelian subgroups. After appearance of Itô's theorem, and motivated by the results of Burnside and Hall, attention is shifted to finite groups that are product of nilpotent groups, the conjecture being that such groups are soluble. In 1958, Wielandt confirms this conjecture in the coprime case and Kegel in the general one in 1962. The outcome of this research is known nowadays as theorem of Kegel and Wielandt: every finite group which is factorized as a product of pairwise permutable nilpotent subgroups is soluble. However it is not known whether its derived length can be bounded in the terms of the nilpotency classes the factors. [\dots] A natural path of inquiry opens up when one asks how the structure of the factors affects the structure of the factorized group when they are connected by certain permutability conditions: totally and mutually permutable products naturally emerge. It was Shunkov in 1964 who first studied pairwise totally permutable subgroups of prime power order. Shunkov's early work was followed in 1989 by a seminal paper of Asaad and Shaalan which established the basic theory of totally and mutually permutable products. Although the entire field is presently in a state of ferment and fluidity, a degree of stability appears to be setting over certain aspects of the subject.''