A well-known theorem of Philip Hall states that if a group G has a nilpotent normal subgroup N such that $G/N'$ is nilpotent, then G itself is nilpotent. We say that a group class 𝔛 is a Hall class if it contains every group G admitting a nilpotent normal subgroup N such that $G/N'$ belongs to 𝔛. Hall classes have been considered by several authors, such as Plotkin [‘Some properties of automorphisms of nilpotent groups’, Soviet Math. Dokl. 2 (1961), 471–474] and Robinson [‘A property of the lower central series of a group’, Math. Z. 107 (1968), 225–231]. A further detailed study of Hall classes is performed by us in another paper [‘Hall classes of groups’, to appear] and we also investigate the behaviour of the class of finite-by-𝔜 groups for a given Hall class 𝔜 [‘Hall classes in linear groups’, to appear]. The aim of this paper is to prove that for most natural choices of the Hall class 𝔜, also the classes $(\mathbf{L}\mathfrak{F})\mathfrak{Y}$ and 𝔅𝔜 are Hall classes, where L𝔉 is the class of locally finite groups and 𝔅 is the class of locally finite groups of finite exponent.

We study the free metabelian group $M(2,n)$ of prime power exponent n on two generators by means of invariants $M(2,n)'\to \mathbb {Z}_n$ that we construct from colorings of the squares in the integer grid $\mathbb {R} \times \mathbb {Z} \cup \mathbb {Z} \times \mathbb {R}$ . In particular, we improve bounds found by Newman for the order of $M(2,2^k)$ . We study identities in $M(2,n)$ , which give information about identities in the Burnside group $B(2,n)$ and the restricted Burnside group $R(2,n)$ .

Suppose that a finite group G admits an automorphism of order 2n such that the fixed-point subgroup of the involution is nilpotent of class c. Let m = ) be the number of fixed points of . It is proved that G has a characteristic soluble subgroup of derived length bounded in terms of n, c whose index is bounded in terms of m, n, c. A similar result is also proved for Lie rings.

Let $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}w$ be a multilinear commutator word, that is, a commutator of weight $n$ in $n$ different group variables. It is proved that if $G$ is a profinite group in which all pronilpotent subgroups generated by $w$-values are periodic, then the verbal subgroup $w(G)$ is locally finite.

Nontrivial pairs of zero-divisors in group rings are introduced and discussed. A problem on the existence of nontrivial pairs of zero-divisors in group rings of free Burnside groups of odd exponent $n\,\gg \,1$ is solved in the affirmative. Nontrivial pairs of zero-divisors are also found in group rings of free products of groups with torsion.

The following theorem is proved. Let m, k and n be positive integers. There exists a number η=η(m,k,n) depending only on m, k and n such that if G is any residually finite group satisfying the condition that the product of any η commutators of the form [xm,y1,…,yk ] is of order dividing n, then the verbal subgroup of G corresponding to the word w=[xm,y1,…,yk ] is locally finite.

We prove some theorems on locally graded groups and nilpotent-by-Chernikov groups.

The normalized positive definite class functions $\C G\,{\longrightarrow}\,\C$ are determined for all those direct limits $G$ of finite alternating groups $\Alt(\Omega_i)$ for which the embeddings $\Alt(\Omega_i)\,{\longrightarrow}\,\Alt(\Omega_j)$ are natural in the sense that every non-trivial $\Alt(\Omega_i)$-orbit in $\Omega_j$ is natural.

In this paper we prove that if V is a vector space over a field of positive characteristric p ≠ 5 then any regular subgroup A of exponent 5 of GL(V) is cyclic. As a consequence a conjecture of Gupta and Mazurov is proved to be true.

Let $L={{L}_{0}}+{{L}_{1}}$ be a ${{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}}$ -graded Lie algebra over a commutative ring with unity in which 2 is invertible. Suppose that ${{L}_{0}}$ is abelian and $L$ is generated by finitely many homogeneous elements ${{a}_{1}},.\,.\,.,{{a}_{k}}$ such that every commutator in ${{a}_{1}},.\,.\,.,{{a}_{k}}$ is ad-nilpotent. We prove that $L$ is nilpotent. This implies that any periodic residually finite ${2}'$ -group $G$ admitting an involutory automorphism $\phi $ with ${{C}_{G}}\left( \phi \right)$ abelian is locally finite.

In a paper published in this journal [1], J. T. Buckely, J. C. Lennox, B. H. Neumann and the authors considered the class of CF-groups, that G such that |H: CoreG (H)| is finite for all subgroups H. It is shown that locally finite CF-groups are abelian-by-finite and BCF, that is, there is an integer n such that |H: CoreG(H)| ≤ n for all subgroups H. The present paper studies these properties in the class of locally graded groups, the main result being that locally graded BCF-groups are abelian-by-finite. Whether locally graded CF-groups are BFC remains an open question. In this direction, the following problems is posed. Does there exist a finitely generated infinite periodic residually finite group in which all subgroups are finite or of finite index? Such groups are locally graded and CF but not BCF.

If G is a group such that every infinite subset of G contains a commuting pair of elements then G is centre-by-finite. This result is due to B. H. Neumann. From this it can be shown that if G is infinite and such that for every pair X, Y of infinite subsets of G there is some x in X and some y in Y that commute, then G is abelian. It is natural to ask if results of this type would hold with other properties replacing commutativity. It may well be that group axioms are restrictive enough to provide meaningful affirmative results for most of the properties. We prove the following result which is of similar nature.

If G is a group such that for each positive integer n and for every n infinite subset X1,...,Xn of G there exist elements xi of Xii = 1,... ,n, such that the subgroup generated by {x1,... ,xn} is finite, then G is locally finite.