Profinite groups with many elements of bounded order

Publication date 27 December 2020

Abstract: L'evai and Pyber proposed the following as a conjecture: Let

G

be a profinite group such that the set of solutions of the equation

x^{n} = 1

has positive Haar measure. Then

G

has an open subgroup

H

and an element

t

such that all elements of the coset

t H

have order dividing

n

(see Problem 14.53 of [The Kourovka Notebook, No. 19, 2019]). \ We define a constant

c_{n}

for all finite groups and prove that the latter conjecture is equivalent with a conjecture saying

c_{n} < 1

. Using the latter equivalence we observe that correctness of L'evai and Pyber conjecture implies the existence of the universal upper bound

f r a c 1 1 - c_{n}

on the index of generalized Hughes-Thompson subgroup

H_{n}

of finite groups whenever it is non-trivial. It is known that the latter is widely open even for all primes

n = p g e q 5

. For odd

n

we also prove that L'evai and Pyber conjecture is equivalent to show that

c_{n}

is less than

1

whenever

c_{n}

is only computed on finite solvable groups. \ The validity of the conjecture has been proved in [Arch. Math. (Basel) 75 (2000) 1-7] for

n = 2

. Here we confirm the conjecture for

n = 3

.

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