CLASSIFICATION OF FINITE GROUPS VIA THEIR BREADTH

Let k be a divisor of a finite group G and Lk(G) = {x ∈ G | xk =1}. Frobenius proved that the number |Lk(G)| is always divisible by k. The following inverse problem is considered: for a given integer n, find all groups G such that max{k-1|Lk(G)| | k ∈ Div(G)} = n, where Div(G) denotes the set of all divisors of |G|. A procedure beginning with (in a sense) minimal members and deducing the remaining ones is outlined and executed for n=8.