ON THE CAPABILITY OF FINITELY GENERATED NON-TORSION GROUPS OF NILPOTENCY CLASS 2

A group is called capable if it is a central factor group. In this paper, we establish a necessary condition for a finitely generated non-torsion group of nilpotency class 2 to be capable. Using the classification of two-generator non-torsion groups of nilpotency class 2, we determine which of them are capable and which are not and give a necessary and sufficient condition for a two-generator non-torsion group of class 2 to be capable in terms of the torsion-free rank of its factor commutator group.