On varieties of metabelian p-groups, and their laws

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to present some results on varieties of metabelian p-groups, nilpotent of class c, with the prime p greater than c. After some preliminary lemmas in § 3, it is established in § 4, Theorem 3, that there is a simple basis for the laws of such a variety, and this basis is explicitly stated. This allows the description of the lattice of such varieties, and in § 5, Theorem 4, it is shown that each such variety has a two-generator member which generates it; this is established by the help of Theorem 5, which states that each critical group is a two-generator group, and Theorem 6, which gives explicitly the varieties generated by the proper subgroups, by the proper quotient groups, and by the proper factor groups of such a critical group.