On Finitely Generated Profinite Groups, Ii 241
Annals of Mathematics, 165 (2007), 239–273 On finitely generated profinite groups, II: products in quasisimple groups By Nikolay Nikolov* and Dan Segal Abstract We prove two results. (1) There is an absolute constant D such that for any finite quasisimple group S, given 2D arbitrary automorphisms of S, every element of S is equal to a product of D ‘twisted commutators’ defined by the given automorphisms. (2) Given a natural number q, there exist C = C(q) and M = M(q) such that: if S is a finite quasisimple group with |S/Z(S)| >C, βj (j =1,... ,M) are any automorphisms of S, and qj (j =1,... ,M) are any divisors of q, then M qj there exist inner automorphisms αj of S such that S = 1 [S, (αjβj) ]. These results, which rely on the classification of finite simple groups, are needed to complete the proofs of the main theorems of Part I. 1. Introduction The main theorems of Part I [NS] were reduced to two results about finite quasisimple groups. These will be proved here. A group S is said to be quasisimple if S =[S, S] and S/Z(S) is simple, where Z(S) denotes the centre of S. For automorphisms α and β of S we write −1 −1 α β Tα,β(x, y)=x y x y . Theorem 1.1. There is an absolute constant D ∈ N such that if S is a finite quasisimple group and α1,β1,... ,αD,βD are any automorphisms of S then ····· S = Tα1,β1 (S, S) TαD ,βD (S, S).
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