Subgroups with a small sum of element orders (Q6137734)

A finite group \(G\) is said to be a \(\mathcal {B}_\psi\)-group if \(\psi(H ) < |G|\) for any proper subgroup \(H\) of \(G\), where \(\psi : H \in \mathrm{L}(G) \mapsto \psi(H) \in \mathbb{N}\) is a function from the lattice of subgroups \(\mathrm{L}(G) \) of \(G\) to the natural numbers \(\mathbb{N}\) and \(\psi(H)\) denotes the sum of element orders of \(H\). Of course, if \(o(x)\) denotes the order of an element \(x \in G\), the definition shows that \[ \psi: G \in \mathrm{L}(G) \mapsto \psi(G) = \sum_{x \in G} o(x) \in \mathbb{N} \] and so \(\mathcal {B}_\psi\)-groups are finite groups, possessing a uniform upper bound for the sum of element orders of the subgroups. It turns out that \(\mathcal {B}_\psi\)-groups have an interesting structure. For instance: \begin{itemize} \item[1.] Abelian \(\mathcal {B}_\psi\)-groups either are elementary abelian \(p\)-groups (\(p\) prime) or cyclic \(p\)-groups of order \(p^2\), see Theorem 1.2. \item[2.] Nilpotent \(\mathcal {B}_\psi\)-groups either have exponent \(p\) or again are cyclic \(p\)-groups of order \(p^2\), see Theorem 2.5. \end{itemize} Among minimal non-nilpotent groups, studied originally by \textit{L. Rédei} [Publ. Math. Debr. 4, 303--324 (1956; Zbl 0075.24003)] and also by \textit{R. Schmidt} [Subgroup lattices of groups. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (1994; Zbl 0843.20003)], \(\mathcal {B}_\psi\)-groups can be characterized very well as per Theorem 2.7. Finally, there are open questions in order to explore similar behaviours for different classes of groups, see Questions 2, 4 and 5.