Related papers: Flag-transitive block designs with prime replicati…

Recently, Leemans and Stokes constructed an infinite family of incidence geometries admitting trialities but no dualities from the groups PSL(2,q) (where $q=p^{3n}$ with $p$ a prime and $n>0$ a positive integer). Unfortunately these…

The motion of a graph is the minimum number of vertices that are moved by a non-trivial automorphism. Equivalently, it can be defined as the minimal degree of its automorphism group (as a permutation group on the vertices). In this paper we…

A semiregular permutation group on a set $\Ome$ is called {\em bi-regular} if it has two orbits. A classification is given of quasiprimitive permutation groups with a biregular dihedral subgroup. This is then used to characterize the family…

In this paper, we study the primitive actions of almost simple exceptional groups of Lie type on \(s\)-arc-transitive digraphs. Our motivation is the following question posed by Giudici and Xia: Is there an upper bound on $s$ for finite…

A digraph is $s$-arc-transitive if its automorphism group is transitive on directed paths with $s$ edges, that is, on $s$-arcs. Although infinite families of finite $s$-arc transitive digraphs of arbitrary valency were constructed by the…

Given an integer $k\ge3$ and a group $G$ of odd order, if there exists a $2$-$(v,k,1)$-design and if $v$ is sufficiently large, then there is such a design whose automorphism group has a subgroup isomorphic to $G$. A weaker result is proved…

A detailed proof is given of a theorem describing the centraliser of a transitive permutation group, with applications to automorphism groups of objects in various categories of maps, hypermaps, dessins, polytopes and covering spaces, where…

A design is called $t$-pyramidal when it has an automorphism group which fixes $t$ points and acts sharply transitively on the remaining points. We determine all symmetric $(2^k-1,2^{k-1},2^{k-2})$-designs which are $(2^{k-1}-1)$-pyramidal…

In the mid-1990s, two groups of authors independently obtained classifications of vertex-transitive graphs whose order is a product of two distinct primes. In the intervening years it has become clear that there is additional information…

In this paper we characterize permutation groups that are automorphism groups of coloured graphs and digraphs and are abelian as abstract groups. This is done in terms of basic permutation group properties. Using Schur's classical…

Combinatorial $t$-designs have nice applications in coding theory, finite geometries and several engineering areas. The objective of this paper is to study how to obtain $3$-designs with $2$-transitive permutation groups. The incidence…

Let $X$ be a subgroup of the full automorphism group of the Hamming graph $H(m,q)$, and $C$ a subset of the vertices of the Hamming graph. We say that $C$ is an \emph{$(X,2)$-neighbour transitive code} if $X$ is transitive on $C$, as well…

A group G is sharply 2-transitive if it admits a faithful permutation representation that is transitive and free on pairs of distinct points. Conjecturally, for all such groups there exists a near-field N (i.e. a skew field that is…

We establish the existence of simple designs with parameters $2$-$(55,10,4)$, $3$-$(20,5,4)$, $3$-$(21,7,30)$, $4$-$(15,5,2)$, $4$-$(16,8,45)$, $5$-$(16,7,10)$, and $5$-$(17,8,40)$, which have previously been unknown. For the corresponding…

It is a simple fact that a group has a trivial automorphism group if and only if it is of order $1$ or $2$. We prove that the same holds for certain families of skew braces, and given any odd prime $p$, we construct a skew brace of order…

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 $G$ of all the partitions in…

Automorphism groups of $2$-groups of coclass at most $3$ are investigated.

We study a class of finite groups $G$ which behave similarly to elementary abelian $p$-groups with $p$ prime, that is, there exists a subgroup $N$ such that all elements of $G\setminus N$ are conjugate or inverse-conjugate under $\Aut(G)$.…

It is clear that the full automorphism group of the $(15,8,4)$-design of points and hyperplane complements of ${\rm PG}(3,2)$ is ${\rm GL}(4,2)$. Using methods of point-line geometries, we determine the full automorphism groups of the…

A Cayley Graph for a group $G$ is called normal edge-transitive if it admits an edge-transitive action of some subgroup of the Holomorph of $G$ (the normaliser of a regular copy of $G$ in $\operatorname{Sym}(G)$). We complete the…