Every Moufang loop of odd order with nontrivial commutant has nontrivial center

Abstract

We get a partial result for Phillips’ problem: does there exist a Moufang loop of odd order with trivial nucleus? First we show that a Moufang loop Q of odd order with nontrivial commutant has nontrivial nucleus, then, by using this result, we prove that the existence of a nontrivial commutant implies the existence of a nontrivial center in Q. Introducing the notion of commutantly nilpotence, we get that the commutantly nilpotence is equivalent to the centrally nilpotence for the Moufang loops of odd order.