2-groups with few conjugacy classes

Abstract

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