A right Engel sink of an element g of a group G is a set ${\mathscr R}(g)$ such that for every x ∈ G all sufficiently long commutators $[...[[g,x],x],\dots ,x]$ belong to ${\mathscr R}(g)$. (Thus, g is a right Engel element precisely when we can choose ${\mathscr R}(g)=\{ 1\}$.) It is proved that if every element of a compact (Hausdorff) group G has a countable right Engel sink, then G has a finite normal subgroup N such that G/N is locally nilpotent.

Let G be a finite group, and let cs(G) be the set of conjugacy class sizes of G. Recalling that an element g of G is called a vanishing element if there exists an irreducible character of G taking the value 0 on g, we consider one particular subset of cs(G), namely, the set vcs(G) whose elements are the conjugacy class sizes of the vanishing elements of G. Motivated by the results inBianchi et al. (2020, J. Group Theory, 23, 79–83), we describe the class of the finite groups G such that vcs(G) consists of a single element under the assumption that G is supersolvable or G has a normal Sylow 2-subgroup (in particular, groups of odd order are covered). As a particular case, we also get a characterization of finite groups having a single vanishing conjugacy class size which is either a prime power or square-free.

Let $G$ be a finite group and $p$ be an odd prime. We show that if $\mathbf{O}_{p}(G)=1$ and $p^{2}$ does not divide every irreducible $p$-Brauer character degree of $G$, then $|G|_{p}$ is bounded by $p^{3}$ when $p\geqslant 5$ or $p=3$ and $\mathsf{A}_{7}$ is not involved in $G$, and by $3^{4}$ if $p=3$ and $\mathsf{A}_{7}$ is involved in $G$.

Let $G$ be a finite group and let $\text{Irr}(G)$ be the set of all irreducible complex characters of $G$. Let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}(G)$ be the set of all prime divisors of character degrees of $G$. The character degree graph $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}(G)$ associated to $G$ is a graph whose vertex set is $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}(G)$, and there is an edge between two distinct primes $p$ and $q$ if and only if $pq$ divides $\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}(1)$ for some $\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}\in \text{Irr}(G)$. We prove that $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}(G)$ is $k$-regular for some natural number $k$ if and only if $\overline{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}}(G)$ is a regular bipartite graph.

We finish the classification, begun in two earlier papers, of all simple fusion systems over finite nonabelian p-groups with an abelian subgroup of index p. In particular, this gives many new examples illustrating the enormous variety of exotic examples that can arise. In addition, we classify all simple fusion systems over infinite nonabelian discrete p-toral groups with an abelian subgroup of index p. In all of these cases (finite or infinite), we reduce the problem to one of listing all 𝔽pG-modules (for G finite) satisfying certain conditions: a problem which was solved in the earlier paper [15] using the classification of finite simple groups.

Let A and G be finite groups and suppose that A acts via automorphisms on G with $(|A|, |G|)=1$. We study how certain conditions on the Sylow 2-subgroups of the fixed point subgroup of the action $C_G(A)$ may imply the non-simplicity or solubility of G.

We consider the relationship between structural information of a finite group $G$ and $\text{cd}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}}(G)$, the set of all irreducible projective character degrees of $G$ with factor set $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$. We show that for nontrivial $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$, if all numbers in $\text{cd}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}}(G)$ are prime powers, then $G$ is solvable. Our result is proved by classical character theory using the bijection between irreducible projective representations and irreducible constituents of induced representations in its representation group.

Assume that $G$ is a finite group and $H$ is a 2-nilpotent Sylow tower Hall subgroup of $G$ such that if $x$ and $y$ are $G$ -conjugate elements of $H\cap G^{\prime }$ of prime order or order 4, then $x$ and $y$ are $H$ -conjugate. We prove that there exists a normal subgroup $N$ of $G$ such that $G=HN$ and $H\cap N=1$ .

We derive some structural properties of a trifactorised finite group $G=AB=AC=BC$ , where $A$ , $B$ , and $C$ are subgroups of $G$ , provided that $A=A_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}}\times A_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}^{\prime }}$ and $B=B_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}}\times B_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}^{\prime }}$ are $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}$ -decomposable groups, for a set of primes $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}$ .

This article began as a study of the structure of infinite permutation groups $G$ in which point stabilisers are finite and all infinite normal subgroups are transitive. That led to two variations. One is the generalisation in which point stabilisers are merely assumed to satisfy min-n, the minimal condition on normal subgroups. The groups $G$ are then of two kinds. Either they have a maximal finite normal subgroup, modulo which they have either one or two minimal nontrivial normal subgroups, or they have a regular normal subgroup $M$ which is a divisible abelian $p$ -group of finite rank. In the latter case the point stabilisers are finite and act irreducibly on a $p$ -adic vector space associated with  $M$ . This leads to our second variation, which is a study of the finite linear groups that can arise.

We investigate whether the total character of a finite group $G$ is a polynomial in a suitable irreducible character of $G$ . When $\left( G,\,Z\left( G \right) \right)$ is a generalized Camina pair, we show that the total character is a polynomial in a faithful irreducible character of $G$ if and only if $Z\left( G \right)$ is cyclic.

We investigate properties which ensure that a given finite graph is the commuting graph of a group or semigroup. We show that all graphs on at least two vertices such that no vertex is adjacent to all other vertices is the commuting graph of some semigroup. Moreover, we obtain complete classifications of the graphs with an isolated vertex or edge that are the commuting graph of a group and the cycles that are the commuting graph of a centrefree semigroup.

The last term of the lower central series of a finite group $G$ is called the nilpotent residual. It is usually denoted by $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}_{\infty }(G)$ . The lower Fitting series of $G$ is defined by $D_{0}(G)=G$ and $D_{i+1}(G)=\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}_{\infty }(D_{i}(G))$ for $i=0,1,2,\ldots \,$ . These subgroups are generated by so-called coprime commutators $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}_{k}^{\ast }$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}_{k}^{\ast }$ in elements of $G$ . More precisely, the set of coprime commutators $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}_{k}^{\ast }$ generates $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}_{\infty }(G)$ whenever $k\geq 2$ while the set $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}_{k}^{\ast }$ generates $D_{k}(G)$ for $k\geq 0$ . The main result of this article is the following theorem: let $m$ be a positive integer and $G$ a finite group. Let $X\subset G$ be either the set of all $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}_{k}^{\ast }$ -commutators for some fixed $k\geq 2$ or the set of all $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}_{k}^{\ast }$ -commutators for some fixed $k\geq 1$ . Suppose that the size of $a^{X}$ is at most $m$ for any $a\in G$ . Then the order of $\langle X\rangle$ is $(k,m)$ -bounded.

Let $G$ be a finite group and let $N$ be a normal subgroup of $G$ . We determine the structure of $N$ when the diameter of the graph associated to the $G$ -conjugacy classes contained in $N$ is as large as possible, that is, equal to three.

Let $G$ be a finite group and $p$ a prime. We say that a $p$ -regular element $g$ of $G$ is $p$ -nonvanishing if no irreducible $p$ -Brauer character of $G$ takes the value $0$ on $g$ . The main result of this paper shows that if $G$ is solvable and $g\in G$ is a $p$ -regular element which is $p$ -nonvanishing, then $g$ lies in a normal subgroup of $G$ whose $p$ -length and $p^{\prime }$ -length are both at most 2 (with possible exceptions for $p\leq 7$ ), the bound being best possible. This result is obtained through the analysis of one particular orbit condition in linear actions of solvable groups on finite vector spaces, and it generalizes (for $p>7$ ) some results in Dolfi and Pacifici [‘Zeros of Brauer characters and linear actions of finite groups’, J. Algebra 340 (2011), 104–113].

In this note we study the finite groups whose subgroup lattices are dismantlable.

Assume that $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}m$ and $n$ are two positive integers which do not divide each other. If the set of conjugacy class sizes of primary and biprimary elements of a group $G$ is $\{1, m, n, mn\}$, we show that up to central factors $G$ is a $\{p,q\}$-group for two distinct primes $p$ and $q$.

All groups considered in this paper are finite. A subgroup $H$ of a group $G$ is called a primitive subgroup if it is a proper subgroup in the intersection of all subgroups of $G$ containing $H$ as a proper subgroup. He et al. [‘A note on primitive subgroups of finite groups’, Commun. Korean Math. Soc. 28(1) (2013), 55–62] proved that every primitive subgroup of $G$ has index a power of a prime if and only if $G/ \Phi (G)$ is a solvable PST-group. Let $\mathfrak{X}$ denote the class of groups $G$ all of whose primitive subgroups have prime power index. It is established here that a group $G$ is a solvable PST-group if and only if every subgroup of $G$ is an $\mathfrak{X}$-group.

The objective of this paper is to find some sufficient conditions to ensure the conjugacy of supplements of a normal subgroup of a soluble group.

We use Godeaux–Serre varieties of finite groups, projective representation theory, the twisted Atiyah–Segal completion theorem, and our previous work on the topological period-index problem to compute the étale index of Brauer classes α ∈ Brét(X) in some specific examples. In particular, these computations show that the étale index of α differs from the period of α in general. As an application, we compute the index of unramified classes in the function fields of high-dimensional Godeaux–Serre varieties in terms of projective representation theory.