Frobenius groups of automorphisms and their fixed points

TL;DR

This paper investigates the structure of finite groups admitting Frobenius automorphism groups, establishing bounds on their order, rank, exponent, and nilpotency class based on fixed-point subgroup properties, using Clifford's theorem and Lie ring methods.

Contribution

It provides new bounds on group properties under Frobenius automorphisms, especially for metacyclic cases, and introduces Lie ring techniques to analyze nilpotency and exponent bounds.

Findings

Bound on |G| in terms of |H| and |C_G(H)|

G is nilpotent if C_G(H) is nilpotent

Exponent and nilpotency class bounds for metacyclic cases

Abstract

Suppose that a finite group $G$ admits a Frobenius group of automorphisms $FH$ with kernel $F$ and complement $H$ such that the fixed-point subgroup of $F$ is trivial: $C_G(F)=1$. In this situation various properties of $G$ are shown to be close to the corresponding properties of $C_G(H)$. By using Clifford's theorem it is proved that the order $|G|$ is bounded in terms of $|H|$ and $|C_G(H)|$, the rank of $G$ is bounded in terms of $|H|$ and the rank of $C_G(H)$, and that $G$ is nilpotent if $C_G(H)$ is nilpotent. Lie ring methods are used for bounding the exponent and the nilpotency class of $G$ in the case of metacyclic $FH$. The exponent of $G$ is bounded in terms of $|FH|$ and the exponent of $C_G(H)$ by using Lazard's Lie algebra associated with the Jennings--Zassenhaus filtration and its connection with powerful subgroups. The nilpotency class of $G$ is bounded in terms of $|H|$ and the nilpotency class of $C_G(H)$ by considering Lie rings with a finite cyclic grading satisfying a certain `selective nilpotency' condition. The latter technique also yields similar results bounding the nilpotency class of Lie rings and algebras with a metacyclic Frobenius group of automorphisms, with corollaries for connected Lie groups and torsion-free locally nilpotent groups with such groups of automorphisms. Examples show that such nilpotency results are no longer true for non-metacyclic Frobenius groups of automorphisms.