On 2-Fold Covers of Graphs

A regular covering projection $\p\colon \tX \to X$ of connected graphs is $G$-admissible if $G$ lifts along $\p$. Denote by $\tG$ the lifted group, and let $\CT(\p)$ be the group of covering transformations. The projection is called $G$-split whenever the extension $\CT(\p) \to \tG \to G$ splits. In this paper, split 2-covers are considered. Supposing that $G$ is transitive on $X$, a $G$-split cover is said to be $G$-split-transitive if all complements $\bG \cong G$ of $\CT(\p)$ within $\tG$ are transitive on $\tX$; it is said to be $G$-split-sectional whenever for each complement $\bG$ there exists a $\bG$-invariant section of $\p$; and it is called $G$-split-mixed otherwise. It is shown, when $G$ is an arc-transitive group, split-sectional and split-mixed 2-covers lead to canonical double covers. For cubic symmetric graphs split 2-cover are necessarily cannonical double covers when $G$ is 1- or 4-regular. In all other cases, that is, if $G$ is $s$-regular, $s=2,3$ or 5, a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a transitive complement $\bG$ is given, and an infinite family of split-transitive 2-covers based on the alternating groups of the form $A_{12k+10}$ is constructed. Finally, chains of consecutive 2-covers, along which an arc-transitive group $G$ has successive lifts, are also considered. It is proved that in such a chain, at most two projections can be split. Further, it is shown that, in the context of cubic symmetric graphs, if exactly two of them are split, then one is split-transitive and the other one is either split-sectional or split-mixed.