Refined conjugate generation in sporadic groups

Abstract

Given an automorphism $x$ of order bigger than $2$ of a sporadic simple group $S$, we show that there are at most $3$ conjugates of $x$ required to generate a subgroup of order divisible by a fixed prime divisor $r$ of $|S|$. The only exception is the case where $S=Suz$, $x$ is in class $3A$, $r=11$, and then the required number of generators is $4$.