Varieties and simple groups

Abstract

In her book on varieties of groups, Hanna Neumann posed the following problem [13, p. 166]: “Can a variety other than D contain an infinite number of non-isomorphic non-abelian finite simple groups?”The answer to this question does not seem to be known at present. However, in [7], Heineken and Neumann described an algorithm for determining whether or not there are any non-abelian finite simple groups satisfying a given law. They also outlined a way in which their algorithm could be used to show that “only finitely many of the known non-abelian finite simple groups can satisfy a given non-trivial law”; in this paper, we shall follow their suggestions, and prove theTHEOREM. Let g be a set of mutually non-isomorphic non-abelian finite simple groups, each of which is either an alternating group or a group of Lie type, and let g generate a proper subvariety of D. Then y is finite.