English

On Cameron's Greedy Conjecture

Group Theory 2025-04-01 v1 Combinatorics

Abstract

A base for a permutation group GG acting on a set Ω\Omega is a subset B\mathcal{B} of Ω\Omega whose pointwise stabiliser G(B)G_{(\mathcal{B})} is trivial. There is a natural greedy algorithm for constructing a base of relatively small size. We write G(G)\mathcal{G}(G) the maximum size of a base it produces, and b(G)b(G) for the size of the smallest base for GG. In 1999, Peter Cameron conjectured that there exists an absolute constant cc such that every finite primitive group GG satisfies G(G)cb(G)\mathcal{G}(G)\leq cb(G). We show that if GG is Sn\mathrm{S}_n or An\mathrm{A}_n acting primitively then either Cameron's Greedy Conjecture holds for GG, or GG falls into one class of possible exceptions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2503.23964,
  title  = {On Cameron's Greedy Conjecture},
  author = {Coen del Valle and Colva M. Roney-Dougal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.23964},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

21 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T22:40:23.698Z