Related papers: Corrigendum and addendum to "Transitive permutatio…
Motivated by the theory of Riemann surfaces, we classify all possibilities for finite simple groups acting faithfully on a compact Riemann surface of genus at least 2 in such a way that all non-trivial elements have at most three fixed…
In this note we document a gap in an argument in the above paper, and point to new work in the literature giving a complete proof of the main result.
In this paper we analyze the structure of transitive permutation groups that have trivial four point stabilizers, but some nontrivial three point stabilizer. In particular we give a complete, detailed classification when the group is simple…
We show that any group $G$ is contained in some sharply 2-transitive group $\mathcal{G}$ without a non-trivial abelian normal subgroup. This answers a long-standing open question. The involutions in the groups $\mathcal{G}$ that we…
We point out some minor errors in a paper by the first author, and explain why they do not affect the main results in the paper.
A finite transitive permutation group is said to be 3/2-transitive if all the nontrivial orbits of a point stabilizer have the same size greater than 1. Examples include the 2-transitive groups, Frobenius groups and several other less…
A classical theorem of Jordan asserts that if a group $G$ acts transitively on a finite set of size at least $2$, then $G$ contains a derangement (a fixed-point free element). Generalisations of Jordan's theorem have been studied…
In this short note we show how to modify the construction of non-split sharply $2$-transitive groups of characteristic~$0$ given by Rips and Tent [arXiv:1604.00573] to allow for arbitrary fields of characteristic 0
The relative fixity of a permutation group is the maximum proportion of the points fixed by a non-trivial element of the group and the relative fixity of a graph is the relative fixity of its automorphism group, viewed as a permutation…
The Markoff group of transformations is a group $\Gamma$ of affine integral morphisms, which is known to act transitively on the set of all positive integer solutions to the equation $x^{2}+y^{2}+z^{2}=xyz$. The fundamental strong…
The classification of flag-transitive generalised quadrangles is a long-standing open problem at the interface of finite geometry and permutation group theory. Given that all known flag-transitive generalised quadrangles are also…
We prove a conjecture of Peter Neumann from 1966, predicting that every finite non-regular primitive permutation group of degree $n$ contains an element fixing at least one point and at most $n^{1/2}$ points. In fact, we prove a stronger…
We give an explicit construction of sharply $2$-transitive groups with fixed point free involutions and without nontrivial abelian normal subgroup.
We construct here the first known examples of non-split sharply 2-transitive groups of bounded exponent in odd positive characteristic for every large enough prime $p \equiv 3 \pmod{4}$. In fact, we show that there are countably many…
The minimal degree of a permutation group $G$ is defined as the minimal number of non-fixed points of a non-trivial element of $G$. In this paper we show that if $G$ is a transitive permutation group of degree $n$ having no non-trivial…
We investigate the proportion of fixed point free permutations (derangements) in finite transitive permutation groups. This article is the first in a series where we prove a conjecture of Shalev that the proportion of such elements is…
We give some corrections of our paper "Primes in arithmetic progressions to large moduli"[BFI]. The corrections do not affect the statements of any of the theorems in the paper. The contents of our two sequel papers [BFI2, BFI3] also remain…
In this short note we present a simple combinatorial trick which can be effectively applied to show the non--existence of sharply transitive sets of permutations in certain finite permutation groups.
The iterated monodromy group of a post-critically finite complex polynomial of degree d \geq 2 acts naturally on the complete d-ary rooted tree T of preimages of a generic point. This group, as well as its pro-finite completion, act on the…
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…