On groups with an irredundant 7-cover. (Q869204)

A cover for a group is a collection of proper subgroups whose union is the whole group. A cover is irredundant if no proper sub-collection is also a cover and is called maximal if all its members are maximal subgroups. For an integer \(n>2\), a cover with \(n\) members is called an \(n\)-cover. In this paper, the authors determine groups with a maximal irredundant 7-cover with core-free intersection. The intersection of an irredundant \(n\)-cover is known to have index bounded by a function of \(n\), though in general the precise bound is not known. In this paper, the authors prove that the exact bound is 81 when \(n\) is 7.