Element orders and codegrees of characters in non-solvable groups (Q6153575)

Let \(G\) be a finite group and \(\mathrm{Irr}(G)\) the set of irreducible characters of \(G\). The codegree of an element \(\chi \in \mathrm{Irr}(G)\) is the number \(\mathrm{cod}(\chi)=\big | G : \ker \chi \big |\cdot \chi(1)^{-1}\). An interesting question related to character codegrees was formulated by \textit{G. Qian} [Arch. Math. 97, No. 2, 99--103 (2011; Zbl 1232.20014)]: it is asked whether, for \(g \in G\), there exists \(\chi \in \mathrm{Irr}(G)\) such that \(\mathrm{cod}(\chi)\) is divisible \(o(g)\), the order of \(g\). This conjecture is a generalization of the following theorem (proved by Qian [loc. cit.] for solvable groups and in full generality by \textit{I. M. Isaacs} [Arch. Math. 97, No. 6, 499--501 (2011; Zbl 1245.20005)]): for every \(g \in G\) there is \(\chi \in \mathrm{Irr}(G)\) such that \(\ker \chi \cap \langle g \rangle =1\) and \(\pi(\mathrm{cod}(\chi))=\pi(o(g))\). The Qian conjecture has been verified under the assumption that \(G\) is solvable [\textit{G. Qian}, Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. 53, No. 3, 820--824 (2021; Zbl 1493.20003)] or almost-simple [\textit{S. Y. Madanha}, Commun. Algebra 51, No. 7, 3143--3151 (2023; Zbl 1522.20036)]. In the paper under review, the authors prove that Qian's conjecture is true for every finite group whose Fitting subgroup is trivial (Theorem A). They also show that a minimal counterexample to Quian's conjecture would be a group whose minimal normal subgroups are all abelian (Remark 3.1).