Conjugacy classes and factorised groups

Laburpena

The influence of the conjugacy class sizes on the structure of a group has been a widely investigated problem within finite group theory. In the last decades, several researchers have obtained new progress in this direction. Specially, some relevant information is provided by the class sizes of certain subsets of elements of the group, as prime power order elements, p-regular elements, etc. Other subsets of elements that have recently attracted interest are defined via the character table of the group, as vanishing elements and real elements. In parallel to this research on conjugacy classes, the study of groups which can be factorised as a product of two subgroups has gained increasing interest. In particular, the structure of factorised groups such that different families of subgroups of the factors satisfy certain permutability conditions has recently been analysed. In this thesis we aim to combine in a novel way both perspectives of group theory. In this framework of very scarce literature, our main purpose is to obtain new contributions about the global structure of a factorised group when the class lengths of some elements in its factors verify certain arithmetical properties. Square-free class length conditions on (p-regular) prime power order elements are considered for products of two subgroups, occasionally mutually permutable. Prime power class sizes are investigated for arbitrary products of two groups, avoiding the use of permutability conditions between the factors. The concept of a core-factorisation of a group, which particularly extends products of mutually permutable subgroups, is introduced for the first time in this dissertation, and it has been revealed determinant within this context. Precisely, this notion emerges when discussing the above arithmetical properties on the class sizes of vanishing elements, interplaying as a novelty character theory and the research on factorised groups. Core-factorisations are also exploited when analysing pi-number and pi'-number class lengths for (prime power order) pi-elements in the factors of a factorised group.