Finite simple groups admitting a partition for the elements of prime-power order

A partition for the elements of prime-power order in a finite group G is a family of subgroups with the property that every non-identity element of prime-power order lies in exactly one subgroup of the family. The main result of this paper is a classification of the finite simple groups which have such a partition. We also establish a connection between this concept and the class of permutation groups all of whose elements of prime-power order have the same number of fixed points.