Large element orders and the characteristic of Lie-type simple groups. (Q731247)

For a Lie-type finite simple group \(G\) defined over a finite field of characteristic \(p\), let \(\text{ch}(G)=p\) and \(m_1(G)>m_2(G)>m_3(G)\) denote the three largest element orders of \(G\). In this paper, the authors prove that if \(G\) and \(H\) are Lie-type finite simple groups of odd characteristics and \(m_i(G)=m_i(H)\) for \(1\leq i\leq 3\), then \(\text{ch}(G)=\text{ch}(H)\). This result was motivated by algorithmic needs in computations with matrix groups.