Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Photograph
- 1 Automorphisms of solvable groups, Part I
- 2 Automorphisms of solvable groups, Part II
- 3 A survey of groups with a single defining relation
- 4 Some algorithms for computing with finite permutation groups
- 5 Five lectures on group rings
- 6 Buildings and group amalgamations
- 7 Finite presentability of S-arithmetic groups
- 8 Efficient presentations of GL(2, ℤ) and PGL(2, ℤ)
- 9 The commutator map
- 10 Polynomial functions and representations
- 11 On questions of Brauer and Feit
- 12 The Picard group and the modular group
- 13 Factor groups of the lower central series of free products of finitely generated abelian groups
- 14 Lattice ordered groups - a very biased survey
- 15 Totally orthogonal finite groups
- 16 One-relator products of groups
- 17 The Cavicchioli groups are pairwise non-isomorphic
- 18 Congruence and non-congruence subgroups of the modular group: a survey
- 19 Small cancellation theory with non-homogeneous geometrical conditions and application to certain Artin groups
- 20 The Lie algebra associated to the lower central series of a group
- 21 Algebraically closed locally finite groups
- 22 On power-commutative and commutation transitive groups
- 23 Dimension function for discrete groups
- 24 Coset graphs
- 25 Nilpotent quotient algorithms
- 26 Generators of p-groups
- 27 On the matrix groups associated to the isometries of the hyperbolic plane
- 28 A characteristic subgroup of N-stable groups
- 29 The isomorphism problem for integral group rings of finite nilpotent groups
- 30 Embedding the root group geometry of 2F4(q)
- 31 On generalized Frobenius complements
- 32 Subgroups of finite index in soluble groups: I
- 33 Subgroups of finite index in soluble groups: II
- 34 Some interconnections between group theory and logic
- 35 Groups covered by abelian subgroups
- 36 Embeddings of infinite permutation groups
- 37 Maximal subgroups of sporadic groups
37 - Maximal subgroups of sporadic groups
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Photograph
- 1 Automorphisms of solvable groups, Part I
- 2 Automorphisms of solvable groups, Part II
- 3 A survey of groups with a single defining relation
- 4 Some algorithms for computing with finite permutation groups
- 5 Five lectures on group rings
- 6 Buildings and group amalgamations
- 7 Finite presentability of S-arithmetic groups
- 8 Efficient presentations of GL(2, ℤ) and PGL(2, ℤ)
- 9 The commutator map
- 10 Polynomial functions and representations
- 11 On questions of Brauer and Feit
- 12 The Picard group and the modular group
- 13 Factor groups of the lower central series of free products of finitely generated abelian groups
- 14 Lattice ordered groups - a very biased survey
- 15 Totally orthogonal finite groups
- 16 One-relator products of groups
- 17 The Cavicchioli groups are pairwise non-isomorphic
- 18 Congruence and non-congruence subgroups of the modular group: a survey
- 19 Small cancellation theory with non-homogeneous geometrical conditions and application to certain Artin groups
- 20 The Lie algebra associated to the lower central series of a group
- 21 Algebraically closed locally finite groups
- 22 On power-commutative and commutation transitive groups
- 23 Dimension function for discrete groups
- 24 Coset graphs
- 25 Nilpotent quotient algorithms
- 26 Generators of p-groups
- 27 On the matrix groups associated to the isometries of the hyperbolic plane
- 28 A characteristic subgroup of N-stable groups
- 29 The isomorphism problem for integral group rings of finite nilpotent groups
- 30 Embedding the root group geometry of 2F4(q)
- 31 On generalized Frobenius complements
- 32 Subgroups of finite index in soluble groups: I
- 33 Subgroups of finite index in soluble groups: II
- 34 Some interconnections between group theory and logic
- 35 Groups covered by abelian subgroups
- 36 Embeddings of infinite permutation groups
- 37 Maximal subgroups of sporadic groups
Summary
In this paper I shall try to summarise the current situation regarding the problem of finding the maximal subgroups of the sporadic simple groups, and to give some idea of the techniques that have been used to attack this problem. The fundamental lemma underlying the method is:
Lemma 1. If Gis a simple group, and M is a maximal subgroup of G, and K is a minimal normal subgroup of M, then
(i)I ii a characteristically simple group (i.e.a direct prdduot of isomorphic simple groups),
(ii)M=NG(K).
Proof. Elementary.
The general strategy is therefore to classify the characteristically simple subgroups into conjugacy classes, and find their normalizers. We then have a list which contains all the maximal subgroups, and it is usually a straightforward matter to eliminate the non-maximal subgroups from this list.
There is a fundamental dichotomy between the cases when K is an elementary Abelian p-group (in this case M is called a p-local subgroup), and the cases when K is non-Abelian. The most difficult problems are concerned with proving uniqueness rather than existence, and with non-local rather than local subgroups.
Before I go into details of the methods perhaps I should give a survey of the results that have been obtained to date. The actual lists of maximal subgroups are of course much too long to include here, but can all be found in the ATLAS [3].
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- Proceedings of Groups - St. Andrews 1985 , pp. 352 - 358Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1987