Prime divisors of orders of products

Abstract

AbstractBaumslag and Wiegold have recently proven that a finite group G is nilpotent if and only if o(xy) = o(x)o(y) for every x, y ∈ G with (o(x), o(y)) = 1. Motivated by this surprisingly new result, we have obtained related results that just consider sets of prime divisors of element orders. For instance, the first of our main results asserts that G is nilpotent if and only if π(o(xy)) = π(o(x)o(y)) for every x, y ∈ G of prime power order with (o(x), o(y)) = 1. As an immediate consequence, we recover the Baumslag–Wiegold Theorem. While this result is still elementary, we also obtain local versions that, for instance, characterize the existence of a normal Sylow p-subgroup in terms of sets of prime divisors of element orders. These results are deeper and our proofs rely on results that depend on the classification of finite simple groups.