On finite alperin <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-groups with homocyclic commutator subgroup

We study metabelian Alperin groups, i.e., metabelian groups in which every 2-generated subgroup has a cyclic commutator subgroup. It is known that, if the minimum number d(G) of generators of a finite Alperin p-group G is n ≥ 3, then d(G′) ≤ C _n ² for p≠ 3 and d(G′) ≤ C _n ² + C _n ³ for p = 3. The first section of the paper deals with finite Alperin p-groups G with p≠ 3 and d(G) = n ≥ 3 that have a homocyclic commutator subgroup of rank C _n ² . In addition, a corollary is deduced for infinite Alperin p-groups. In the second section, we prove that, if G is a finite Alperin 3-group with homocyclic commutator subgroup G- of rank C _n ² + C _n ³ , then G″ is an elementary abelian group.