Strongly connective degree sets I: nonabelian solvable quotients

When G is a finite nonabelian group, we associate the common-divisor graph (G) with G by letting nontrivial degrees in cd(G) be the vertices and making distinct vertices adjacent if they have a common nontrivial divisor. A set of vertices for this graph is said to be strongly connective for cd(G) if there is some prime which divides every member of and every vertex outside of is adjacent to some member of When G has a nonabelian solvable quotient, we show that if (G) is connected and has a diameter of at most 2, then indeed cd(G) has a strongly connective subset.Received: 7 July 2004; revised: 5 October 2004