Detecting laws in power subgroups

Abstract

A group law is said to be detectable in power subgroups if, for all coprime $m$ and $n$, a group $G$ satisfies the law if and only if the power subgroups $G^m$ and $G^n$ both satisfy the law. We prove that for all positive integers $c$, nilpotency of class at most $c$ is detectable in power subgroups, as is the $k$-Engel law for $k$ at most 4. In contrast, detectability in power subgroups fails for solvability of given derived length: we construct a finite group $W$ such that $W^2$ and $W^3$ are metabelian but $W$ has derived length $3$. We analyse the complexity of the detectability of commutativity in power subgroups, in terms of finite presentations that encode a proof of the result.