Groups in which the bounded nilpotency of two-generator subgroups is a transitive relation. (Q880224)

Let \(c\) be a positive integer. The authors study groups, especially locally finite groups, with the property that whenever \(x,y\) and \(z\) lie in \(G\) with \(\langle x,y\rangle\) and \(\langle y,z\rangle\) nilpotent of class at most \(c\), then \(\langle x,z\rangle\) is also nilpotent of class \(c\). If \(c=1\) these are the CT-groups studied classically by people from Weisner in 1925 to Suzuki in 1957. The authors therefore focus on the case \(c>1\). Their main result seems to be that a locally finite group with this property is either locally soluble or isomorphic to \(\text{PSL}(2,\mathbb{F})\) or \(\text{Sz}(\mathbb{F})\) for a suitable locally finite field of characteristic 2. They are also able to characterize soluble locally finite groups with this property. The authors then generalize the notion of a commutative-transitive (CT) kernel of a group to the case where \(c>1\). Thus they construct a canonical subgroup \(T\) of a group \(G\) such that \(G/T\) has the above property and \(G\) has the above property if and only if \(T=\langle 1\rangle\). They show that \(T\) has a simplified structure if \(G\) is locally finite.