Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Two-Groups With Few Conjugacy Classes, Nigel Boston, Judy L. Walker

Department of Mathematics: Faculty Publications

An old question of Brauer asking how fast numbers of conjugacy classes grow is investigated by considering the least number c_n of conjugacy classes in a group of order 2ⁿ. The numbers c_n are computed for n ≤ 14 and a lower bound is given for c₁₅. It is observed that c_n grows very slowly except for occasional large jumps corresponding to an increase in coclass of the minimal groups G_n. Restricting to groups that are 2-generated or have coclass at most 3 allows us to extend these computations.