Metanilpotent fitting classes

Abstract

Hawkes showed in [10] that classes of metanilpotent groups which are both formations and Fitting classes are saturated and subgroup closed; more, he characterized all such classes as those local formations with a local definition consisting of saturated formations (of nilpotent groups). In [3] we showed that those “Fitting formations” which are subgroup closed are also saturated, without restriction on nilpotent length; indeed such classes are, roughly speaking, recursively definable as local formations using a local definition consisting of such classes. It is natural to ask how these hypotheses may be weakened yet still produce the same classes of groups. Already in [10] Hawkes showed that Fitting formations need be neither subgroup closed nor saturated; and in [3] we showed that a saturated Fitting formation need not be subgroup closed (though a Fitting formation of groups of nilpotent length three is saturated if and only if it is subgroup closed).