On profinite groups with word values covered by nilpotent subgroups

Abstract

Let N stand for the class of nilpotent groups or one of its well-known generalizations. For a multilinear commutator word w and a profinite group G we show that w(G) is finite-by-N if and only if the set of wvalues in G is covered by countably many finite-by-N subgroups. Earlier this was known only in the case where w = x or w = [x, y].