On the sum of character codegrees of finite groups (Q7035294)

Let \(G\) be a finite group, \(C_{n}\) the cyclic group of order \(n\) and \(\mathrm{Irr}(G)\) the set of irreducible (complex) characters of \(G\). If \(\chi \in \mathrm{Irr}(G)\), then the codegree of \(\chi\) is defined as \(\mathrm{cod}(\chi)=| G : \ker \chi | \cdot \chi(1)^{-1}\).\N\NIn the paper under review, the authors define \(S_{c}(G)=\sum_{\chi \in \mathrm{Irr}(G)} \mathrm{cod}(\chi)\) and consider the question: if \(|G|=n\) is it true that \(S_{c}(G) \leq S_{c}(C_{n})\)?\N\NThey show that the answer to this question is positive for nilpotent groups and prove the following results.\N\NTheorem 1.3: Let \(G\) be a group of order \(n\), and let \(P\) be a Sylow \(p\)-subgroup of \(G\), where \(p\) is the largest prime divisor of the order of \(G\). If either \(P\) is not normal in \(G\) or \(P\) is nonabelian, then \(S_{c}(G) \leq S_{c}(C_{n})\).\N\NTheorem 1.4: Let \(G\) be a group of order \(n\) with \(|\pi(G)|= t \leq 99\), where \(\pi(G)\) denotes the set of all primes dividing the order of \(G\) and \(t\) and \(n\) are positive integers. Then, \(S_{c}(G) \leq S_{c}(C_{n})\).\N\NGiven the results mentioned above, it is quite surprising that the authors manage to prove, using methods of number theory, the following result:\N\NTheorem 1.5: There is an integer \(n\) and a group \(G\) of order \(n\) so that \(S_{c}(G) > S_{c}(C_{n})\). \N\NThe authors were unable to determine the minimum value of \(t=|\pi(G)|\) for which Theorem 1.5 holds; they conjecture that this value must be quite large.