Related papers: On the Cameron-Praeger Conjecture

More than $30$ years ago, Delandtsheer and Doyen showed that the automorphism group of a block-transitive $2$-design, with blocks of size $k$, could leave invariant a nontrivial point-partition, but only if the number of points was bounded…

In the representation theory of finite groups, there is a well-known and important conjecture due to M. Brou\'e. He conjectures that, for any prime p, if a p-block A of a finite group G has an abelian defect group P, then A and its Brauer…

We consider an experimental design problem for permutations: given a fixed set $X$, and an integer $t$, construct a list $L$ of permutations of $X$ such that every ordered $t$-tuple of distinct elements of $X$ occurs as a consecutive…

A $t$-$(n,k,\lambda)$ design over $\F_q$ is a collection of $k$-dimensional subspaces of $\F_q^n$, called blocks, such that each $t$-dimensional subspace of $\F_q^n$ is contained in exactly $\lambda$ blocks. Such $t$-designs over $\F_q$ are…

We study Brauer's long-standing $k(B)$-conjecture on the number of characters in $p$-blocks for finite quasi-simple groups and show that their blocks do not occur as a minimal counterexample for $p\ge5$ nor in the case of abelian defect.…

In this paper, we initiate the study of discrepancy questions for combinatorial designs. Specifically, we show that, for every fixed $r\ge 3$ and $n\equiv 1,3 \pmod{6}$, any $r$-colouring of the triples on $[n]$ admits a Steiner triple…

The purpose of this paper is to classify all pairs $(\mathcal{D}, G)$, where $\mathcal{D}$ is a non-trivial $2$-$(v, k, 2)$ design, and $G\leq Aut(\mathcal{D})$ acts transitively on the set of blocks of $\mathcal{D}$ and primitively on the…

In this paper, we present a method for constructing point primitive block transitive $t$-designs invariant under finite groups. Furthermore, we demonstrate that every point and block primitive $G$-invariant design can be generated using…

Let G be an automorphism group of a nontrivial t-(k^2,k,\lambda) design. In this paper, we prove that if G is block-transitive, then the socle of G cannot be a finite simple exceptional group of Lie type.

A notion of $t$-designs in the symmetric group on $n$ letters was introduced by Godsil in 1988. In particular $t$-transitive sets of permutations form a $t$-design. We derive special lower bounds for $t=1$ and $t=2$ by a power moment…

We classify all pairs (G,V) with G a closed subgroup in a classical group with natural module V over the complex numbers such that G has the same composition factors on the kth tensor power of V, for a fixed (small) k. In particular, we…

In 1994 Drew, Johnson and Loewy conjectured that for $n \ge 4$, the cp-rank of any $n\times n$ completely positive matrices is at most $\lfloor{n^2}/{4}\rfloor$. Recently this conjecture has been proved for $n=5$ and disproved for $n\ge 7$,…

Karp conjectured that all nontrivial monotone graph properties are evasive. This was proved for n a prime power, and n=6, where n is the number of graph vertices, by Kahn, Saks, and Sturtevant. We give a complete description of which…

We prove the existence conjecture for combinatorial designs, answering a question of Steiner from 1853. More generally, we show that the natural divisibility conditions are sufficient for clique decompositions of simplicial complexes that…

The projective special linear group $\PSL_2(n)$ is $2$-transitive for all primes $n$ and $3$-homogeneous for $n \equiv 3 \pmod{4}$ on the set $\{0,1, \cdots, n-1, \infty\}$. It is known that the extended odd-like quadratic residue codes are…

A Steiner 2-design of block size k is an ordered pair (V, B) of finite sets such that B is a family of k-subsets of V in which each pair of elements of V appears exactly once. A Steiner 2-design is said to be r-even-free if for every…

A famous theorem of Kirkman says that there exists a Steiner triple system of order $n$ if and only if $n\equiv 1,3\mod{6}$. In 1973, Erd\H{o}s conjectured that one can find so-called `sparse' Steiner triple systems. Roughly speaking, the…

One of the very first results about designs over finite fields, by S. Thomas, is the existence of a cyclic 2-$(n,3,7)$ design over $\mathbb{F}_{2}$ for every integer $n$ coprime with 6. Here, by means of difference methods, we reprove and…

Among the properties of homogeneity of incidence structures flag-transitivity obviously is a particularly important and natural one. Consequently, in the last decades also flag-transitive Steiner tdesigns (i.e. flag-transitive t-(v,k,1)…

A $3$-$(v,\{4,6\},1)$ design is a configuration of $v$ points and a collection of $4$- and $6$-element subsets called blocks, that jointly contain every 3-element subset exactly once. Using an exhaustive computer search on $v\leq 28$ points…