Some results on Quillen's Conjecture via equivalent-poset techniques

Abstract

We extend the Main Theorem of Aschbacher and Smith on Quillen's Conjecture from $p>5$ to the remaining odd primes $p = 3,5$. In the process, we develop further combinatorial and homotopical methods for studying the poset of nontrivial elementary abelian $p$-subgroups of a finite group. The techniques lead to a number of further results on the Conjecture, often reducing dependence on the CFSG; in particular, we also provide some partial results toward the case of $p=2$.