Prime divisors of irreducible character degrees. (Q908265)

This paper is a contribution to what is known as Huppert's \(\rho\)-\(\sigma\)-conjecture. Let \(G\) be a finite group. Let \(\rho(G)\) be the set of primes which divide some character degrees of \(G\) and \(\sigma(G)\) the largest number of distinct primes which divide a single character degree of \(G\). In 1991, B. Huppert asked for a bound of \(|\rho(G)|\) in terms of \(\sigma(G)\) and conjectured that \(|\rho(G)|\leq 2\sigma(G)\) for solvable groups and \(|\rho(G)|\leq 3\sigma(G)\) in general. O. Manz and T. R. Wolf suggested that for arbitrary groups the even stronger bound \(|\rho(G)|\leq 2\sigma(G)+1\) should hold, which the author calls the \textit{strengthened Huppert's \(\rho\)-\(\sigma\)-conjecture}. A number of authors have worked on the conjecture over the years, and the currently best bound in the general case is \(|\rho(G)|\leq 7\sigma(G)\) by C. Casolo and S. Dolfi. In the paper under review the author proves the strengthened Huppert's \(\rho\)-\(\sigma\)-conjecture in the case that \(G\) is an almost simple group. He even proves that then \(|\rho(G)|\leq 2\sigma(G)\) unless \(G\cong\mathrm{PSL}_2(2^f)\) with \(f\geq 2\) and the number of different primes occurring in \(2^f-1\) equals the number of different primes in \(2^f+1\). (The proof depends on CFSG.) Another result of the paper is that the strengthened Huppert's \(\rho\)-\(\sigma\)-conjecture holds whenever \(\sigma(G)\leq 2\).