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Some groups with right Engel elements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2010

Werner Nickel
Affiliation:
School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences, University of St Andrews, Fife KY16 9SS, Scotland
C. M. Campbell
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews, Scotland
E. F. Robertson
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews, Scotland
N. Ruskuc
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews, Scotland
G. C. Smith
Affiliation:
University of Bath
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Summary

Abstract

In 1970 I.D. Macdonald exhibited a nilpotent group in which the square and the inverse of a right 3-Engel element need not be 3-Engel and thereby showing that the set of right 3-Engel elements of a group need not form a subgroup. In this note a nilpotent group for each n ≥ 3 is constructed such that the set of right n-Engel elements in each group is not a subgroup.

Introduction

An element a of a group is called a right n-Engel element, n a positive integer, if for each element g of the group [a, ng] = 1 (cf. [Rob72, p. 40]). Commutators are written left-normed and repeated entries in a commutator are indicated by left subscripts. Clearly, the set of right 1-Engel elements is the centre of the group and therefore a subgroup. W. Kappe [Kap61] proved that the set of right 2-Engel elements of a group is also a subgroup. I.D. Macdonald [Mac70] showed that the set of right 3-Engel elements of a group need not form a subgroup by constructing a group with an element that is right 3-Engel but whose inverse and square are not. In this paper we will construct a group for each n ≤ 3 with a right n-Engel element whose inverse and square are not right n-Engel. This answers a question raised at the conference by W. Kappe for such an example for n = 4.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1999

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