Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2009
A general method is described for constructing examples of soluble groups whose normal subgroups form a well-ordered chain under the ordering of inclusion. This method is a variant of one introduced in a recent paper by Heineken and Wilson. Each of the resulting groups is obtained by an embedding procedure from a pair of iterated wreath products A1 wr A2 wr … wr An, B1 wr B2 wr … wr Bn, where the constituent groups Ai., Bi are each either cyclic of prime power order or quasicyclic. Here n may be chosen arbitrarily, and the choice of constituent groups is subject only to a condition on the sequences of prime numbers that may occur as orders of elements in the groups
respectively. The construction is applied to give certain examples which illustrate the limitations of results on particular classes of soluble groups satisfying the minimal condition for normal subgroups obtained in recent papers by Hartley, McDougall, and the present author.