Character degrees and nilpotence class in p-groups

Abstract

AbstractWork of Isaacs and Passman shows that for some sets X of integers, p-groups whose set of irreducible character degrees is precisely X have bounded nilpotence class, while for other choices of X, the nilpotence class is unbounded. This paper presents a theoren which shows some additional sets of character degrees which bound nilpotence class within the family of metabelian p-groups. In particular, it is shown that is the non-linear irreducible character degrees of G lie between pa and pb, where a ≤ b ≤ 2a − 2, then the nilpotence class of G is bounded by a function of p and b − a.