Powers of irreducible characters and conjugacy classes in finite groups

Abstract

Let G be a finite group. We define the derived covering number and the derived character covering number of G, denoted respectively by dcn (G) and dccn (G), as the smallest positive integer n such that Cn = G′ for all non-central conjugacy classes C of G and Irr ((χn)G′) = Irr (G′) for all nonlinear irreducible characters χ of G, respectively. In this paper, we obtain some results on dcn and dccn for a finite group G, such as the existence of these numbers and upper bounds on them.