English

Block-transitive designs with a poset of imprimitive partitions

Group Theory 2025-12-19 v1 Combinatorics

Abstract

We study block designs which admit an automorphism group that is transitive on blocks and points, and leaves invariant every partition in a given finite poset of partitions of the point set. The full stabiliser GG of all the partitions in the poset is a generalised wreath product. We use the theory of generalised wreath products to give necessary and sufficient conditions, in terms of the `array' of a point-subset BB, for the set of GG-images of BB to form the block-set of a GG-block-transitive 22-design. This generalises previous results for the special cases where the poset is a chain or an anti-chain. We also give explicit infinite families of examples of 22-designs for each poset involving three proper partitions, and for the famous NN-poset with four partitions. (Posets with two proper partitions have been treated previously.) This suggests the problem of finding explicit examples for other posets.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.16246,
  title  = {Block-transitive designs with a poset of imprimitive partitions},
  author = {Carmen Amarra and Alice Devillers and Cheryl E. Praeger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.16246},
  year   = {2025}
}