Block-transitive Steiner $t$-designs form a central part of the study of highly symmetric combinatorial configurations at the interface of several disciplines, including group theory, geometry, combinatorics, coding and information theory, and cryptography. The main result of the paper settles an important open question: There exist no non-trivial examples with $t=7$ (or larger). The proof is based on the classification of the finite 3-homogeneous permutation groups, itself relying on the finite simple group classification.
Let $q$ be a prime power and $V\cong{\mathbb F}_q^n$. A $t$-$(n,k,λ)_q$ design, or simply a subspace design, is a pair ${\mathcal D}=(V,{\mathcal B})$, where ${\mathcal B}$ is a subset of the set of all $k$-dimensional subspaces of $V$, with the property that each $t$-dimensional subspace of $V$ is contained in precisely $λ$ elements of ${\mathcal B}$. Subspace designs are the $q$-analogues of balanced incomplete block designs. Such a design is called block-transitive if its automorphism group ${\rm Aut}({\mathcal D})$ acts transitively on ${\mathcal B}$. It is shown here that if $t\geq 2$ and…
We construct a combinatorial function F which computes the number of oriented Hamiltonian paths of any given type, in a transitive tournament. We also study many properties of F that arise, and reach some observations.
In this paper, we present a classification of $2$-designs with $\gcd(r,λ)=1$ admitting flag-transitive automorphism groups. If $G$ is a flag-transitive automorphism group of a non-trivial $2$-design $\mathcal{D}$ with $\gcd(r,λ)=1$, then either $(\mathcal{D},G)$ is one of the known examples described in this paper, or $\mathcal{D}$ has $q = p^{d}$ points with $p$ prime and $G$ is a subgroup of $AΓL_{1}(q)$.
We study point-block incidence structures $(\mathcal{P},\mathcal{B})$ for which the point set $\mathcal{P}$ is an $m\times n$ grid. Cameron and the fourth author showed that each block $B$ may be viewed as a subgraph of a complete bipartite graph $\mathbf{K}_{m,n}$ with bipartite parts (biparts) of sizes $m, n$. In the case where $\mathcal{B}$ consists of all the subgraphs isomorphic to $B$, under automorphisms of $\mathbf{K}_{m,n}$ fixing the two biparts, they obtained necessary and sufficient conditions for $(\mathcal{P},\mathcal{B})$ to be a $2$-design, and to be a $3$-design. We first re-i…
In this article, we investigate $2$-$(v,k,λ)$ designs with $\gcd(r,λ)=1$ admitting flag-transitive automorphism groups $G$. We prove that if $G$ is an almost simple group, then such a design belongs to one of the seven infinite families of $2$-designs or it is one of the eleven well-known examples. We describe all these examples of designs. We, in particular, prove that if $\mathcal{D}$ is a symmetric $(v,k,λ)$ design with $\gcd(k,λ)=1$ admitting a flag-transitive automorphism group $G$, then either $G\leq AΓL_{1}(q)$ for some odd prime power $q$, or $\mathcal{D}$ is a projective space or the …
Delandtsheer and Doyen bounded, in terms of the block size, the number of points of a point-imprimitive, block-transitive 2-design. To do this they introduced two integer parameters, m and n, now called Delandtsheer--Doyen parameters, linking the block size with the parameters of an associated imprimitivity system on points. We show that the Delandtsheer--Doyen parameters provide upper bounds on the permutation ranks of the groups induced on the imprimitivity system and on a class of the system. We explore extreme cases where these bounds are attained, give a new construction for a family of d…
It is shown that, apart from the smallest Ree group, a flag-transitive automorphism group $G$ of a $2$-$(k^{2}, k, λ)$ design D, with $λ\mid k$, is either an affine group or an almost simple classical group. Moreover, when $G$ is the smallest Ree group, $\mathcal{D}$ is isomorphic either to the $2$-$(62, 6, 2)$ design or to one of the three $2$- $(62, 6, 6)$ designs constructed in this paper. All the four $2$-designs have the $36$ secants of a nondegenerate conic $\mathcal{C}$ of $PG_{2}(8)$ as a point set and 6-sets of secants in a remarkable configuration as a block set.
This paper initiates the investigation of the family of $(G,s)$-geodesic-transitive digraphs with $s\geq 2$. We first give a global analysis by providing a reduction result. Let $Γ$ be such a digraph and let $N$ be a normal subgroup of $G$ maximal with respect to having at least $3$ orbits. Then the quotient digraph $Γ_N$ is $(G/N,s')$-geodesic-transitive where $s'=\min\{s,\diam(Γ_N)\}$, $G/N$ is either quasiprimitive or bi-quasiprimitive on $V(Γ_N)$, and $Γ_N$ is either directed or an undirected complete graph. Moreover, it is further shown that if $Γ$ is not $(G,2)$-arc-transitive, then $G/N…
In 1987, Huw Davies proved that, for a flag-transitive point-imprimitive $2$-$(v,k,λ)$ design, both the block-size $k$ and the number $v$ of points are bounded by functions of $λ$, but he did not make these bounds explicit. In this paper we derive explicit polynomial functions of $λ$ bounding $k$ and $v$. For $λ\leq 4$ we obtain a list of `numerically feasible' parameter sets $v, k, λ$ together with the number of parts and part-size of an invariant point-partition and the size of a nontrivial block-part intersection. Moreover from these parameter sets we determine all examples with fewer than …
Two elements $g$ and $h$ of a permutation group $G$ acting on a set $V$ are said to be intersecting if $g(v) = h(v)$ for some $v \in V$. More generally, a subset ${\cal F}$ of $G$ is an intersecting set if every pair of elements of ${\cal F}$ is intersecting. The intersection density $ρ(G)$ of a transitive permutation group $G$ is the maximum value of the quotient $|{\cal F}|/|G_v|$ where $G_v$ is a stabilizer of $v\in V$ and ${\cal F}$ runs over all intersecting sets in $G$. Intersection densities of transitive groups of degree $pq$, where $p>q$ are odd primes, is considered. In particular, t…
