Fusion systems containing pearls (Q724272)

For the study of saturated fusion systems \(\mathcal{F}\) on a \(p\)-group \(S\), the so called essential subgroups \(E\) play a prominent role. In fact, together with \(\mathrm{Aut}_{\mathcal{F}}(S)\) the normalizers \(\mathrm{Aut}_{\mathcal{F}}(E)\) control the structure of \(\mathcal{F}\). Hence, in a certain sense essential subgroups are large as they are centric and fully normalized, but on the other hand they are small as \(\mathrm{Out}_{\mathcal{F}}(E)\) contains a strongly \(p\)-embedded subgroup, which for example for \(p = 2\) strongly restricts the structure. The smallest possible essential subgroups of \(S\) are elementary abelian groups of order \(p^2\) or in the non-abelian case extraspecial groups of order \(p^3\). These groups are called pearls by the author. Of course, a \(p\)-group, which contains a self-centralizing elementary abelian group of order \(p^2\) is of maximal class. Hence, the structure of \(S\) is strongly restricted. Because of this, the paper deals with \(p\) odd and the main results of the paper give information about the sectional rank of \(S\), if \(S\) has pearls. It is shown that the sectional rank \(k\) is bounded by \(p\). Furthermore, there are basically three possibilities \begin{itemize} \item[(1)] \(|S| = p^{k+1}\) and there is a maximal subgroup which is elementary abelian, \item[(2)] \(p = k+1\) and \(\gamma_1(S) = C_S(Z_2(S))\), \item[(3)] \(k \geq 3, k+ 3 \leq p \leq 2k+1\) and \(S\) has exponent \(p\), \(p^{k+1} \leq |S| \leq p^{p-1}\). \end{itemize} In a second result for \(k \leq 4\), the author lists all groups \(S\) and all saturated fusion systems \(\mathcal{F}\). There is also another application of the result, which is for small primes. For \(p = 3\) or \(5\) nothing new happens. But for \(p = 7\), the author constructs a fusion system on \(S\), \(|S| = 7^5\), which is exotic.