Criteria for solvable radical membership via p-elements

Abstract: Guralnick, Kunyavskii, Plotkin and Shalev have shown that the solvable radical of a finite group $G$ can be characterized as the set of all $x\in G$ such that $<x,y>$ is solvable for all $y\in G$. We prove two generalizations of this result. Firstly, it is enough to check the solvability of $<x,y>$ for every $p$-element $y\in G$ for every odd prime $p$. Secondly, if $x$ has odd order, then it is enough to check the solvability of $<x,y>$ for every 2-element $y\in G$.