On a conjecture of Zhuang and Gao

Abstract

Let $G$ be a multiplicatively written finite group. We denote by $\mathsf E(G)$ the smallest integer $t$ such that every sequence of $t$ elements in $G$ contains a product-one subsequence of length $|G|$. In 1961, Erd\H{o}s, Ginzburg and Ziv proved that $\mathsf E(G)\leq 2|G|-1$ for every finite ablian group $G$ and this result is known as the Erd\H{o}s-Ginzburg-Ziv Theorem. In 2005, Zhuang and Gao conjectured that $\mathsf E(G)=\mathsf d(G)+|G|$, where $\mathsf d(G)$ is the small Davenport constant. In this paper, we confirm the conjecture for the case when $G=\langle x, y| x^p=y^m=1, x^{-1}yx=y^r\rangle$, where $p$ is the smallest prime divisor of $|G|$ and $\mbox{gcd}(p(r-1), m)=1$.