Conjugacy classes of maximal cyclic subgroups of metacyclic 𝑝-groups

Abstract In this paper, we set η ⁢ ( G ) \eta(G) to be the number of conjugacy classes of maximal cyclic subgroups of a finite group 𝐺. We compute η ⁢ ( G ) \eta(G) for all metacyclic 𝑝-groups. We show that if 𝐺 is a metacyclic 𝑝-group of order p n p^{n} that is not dihedral, generalized quaternion, or semi-dihedral, then η ⁢ ( G ) ≥ n - 2 \eta(G)\geq n-2 , and we determine when equality holds.