We give a unified approach to analysing, for each positive integer $s$, a class of finite connected graphs that contains all the distance transitive graphs as well as the locally $s$-arc transitive graphs of diameter at least $s$. A graph is in the class if it is connected and if, for each vertex $v$, the subgroup of automorphisms fixing $v$ acts transitively on the set of vertices at distance $i$ from $v$, for each $i$ from 1 to $s$. We prove that this class is closed under forming normal quotients. Several graphs in the class are designated as degenerate, and a nondegenerate graph in the class is called basic if all its nontrivial normal quotients are degenerate. We prove that, for $s\geq 2$, a nondegenerate, nonbasic graph in the class is either a complete multipartite graph, or a normal cover of a basic graph. We prove further that, apart from the complete bipartite graphs, each basic graph admits a faithful quasiprimitive action on each of its (1 or 2) vertex orbits, or a biquasiprimitive action. These results invite detailed additional analysis of the basic graphs using the theory of quasiprimitive permutation groups.
We prove that the first homology group of every planar locally transitive finite graph $G$ is a finitely generated ${\rm Aut}(G)$-module and we prove a similar result for the fundamental group of locally finite planar Cayley graphs. Corollaries of these results include Droms's theorem that planar groups are finitely presented and Dunwoody's theorem that planar locally finite transitive graphs are accessible.
A permutation group is called semiprimitive if each of its normal subgroups is either transitive or semiregular. Given nontrivial finite transitive permutation groups $L_1$ and $L_2$ with $L_1$ not semiprimitive, we construct an infinite family of rank two amalgams of permutation type $[L_1,L_2]$ and Borel subgroups of strictly increasing order. As an application, we show that there is no bound on the order of edge-stabilisers in locally $[L_1,L_2]$ graphs. We also consider the corresponding question for amalgams of rank $k\geq 3$. We completely resolve this by showing that the order of the Bo…
We study locally $s$-arc-transitive graphs arising from the quasiprimitive product action (PA). We prove that, for any locally $(G,2)$-arc-transitive graph with $G$ acting quasiprimitively with type PA on both $G$-orbits of vertices, the group $G$ does not act primitively on either orbit. Moreover, we construct the first examples of locally $s$-arc-transitive graphs of PA type that are not standard double covers of $s$-arc-transitive graphs of PA type, answering the existence question for these graphs.
We prove that the cut space of any transitive graph $G$ is a finitely generated ${\rm Aut}(G)$-module if the same is true for its cycle space. This confirms a conjecture of Diestel which says that every locally finite transitive graph whose cycle space is generated by cycles of bounded length is accessible. In addition, it implies Dunwoody's conjecture that locally finite hyperbolic transitive graphs are accessible. As a further application, we obtain a combinatorial proof of Dunwoody's accessibility theorem of finitely presented groups.
Ostrom and Wagner (1959) proved that if the automorphism group $G$ of a finite projective plane $π$ acts $2$-transitively on the points of $π$, then $π$ is isomorphic to the Desarguesian projective plane and $G$ is isomorphic to $\mathrm{PΓL}(3,q)$ (for some prime-power $q$). In the more general case of a finite rank $2$ irreducible spherical building, also known as a \emph{generalized polygon}, the theorem of Fong and Seitz (1973) gave a classification of the \emph{Moufang} examples. A conjecture of Kantor, made in print in 1991, says that there are only two non-classical examples of flag-tra…
Chordal graphs are important in the structural and algorithmic graph theory. A digraph analogue of chordal graphs was introduced by Haskin and Rose in 1973 but has not been a subject of active studies until recently when a characterization of semicomplete chordal digraphs in terms of forbidden subdigraphs was found by Meister and Telle. Locally semicomplete digraphs, quasi-transitive digraphs, and extended semi-complete digraphs are amongst the most popular generalizations of semicomplete digraphs. We extend the forbidden subdigraph characterization of semicomplete chordal digraphs to locally …
From the point of view of discrete geometry, the class of locally finite transitive graphs is a wide and important one. The subclass of Cayley graphs is of particular interest, as testifies the development of geometric group theory. Recall that Cayley graphs can be defined as non-empty locally finite connected graphs endowed with a transitive group action such that any non-identity element acts without fixed point. We define a class of transitive graphs which are transitive in an "absolutely non-Cayley way": we consider graphs endowed with a transitive group action such that any element of the…
For a connected locally $(G,s$)-arc-transitive graph $Γ$ with $s\geqslant 2$ and an edge ${v,w}$, determining the amalgam $(G_v,G_w,G_{vw})$ is a fundamental problem in the area of symmetrical graph theory, but it is very difficult. In this paper, we give a classification of $(G_v,G_w,G_{vw})$ in the case where the vertex stabilisers $G_v$ and $G_w$ are faithful on their neighbourhoods, which shows that except for the case $G_v\cong G_w$, there are exactly 16 such triples.
This paper studies whether there are distance-transitive graphs arising from the coset actions of $G_2(q)$ on the subfield subgroup $G_2(\sqrt{q})$ or $G_2(q)$ on the Ree subgroup $^2G_2(q)$. It is found that there are no such graphs, even if the groups are extended by outer automorphisms of $G_2(q)$.
In this note, we show that locally finite quasi-transitive graphs are quasi-isometric to trees if and only if every other locally finite quasi-transitive graph quasi-isometric to them is minor excluded. This generalizes results by Ostrovskii and Rosenthal and by Khukhro on minor exclusion for groups.
A mixed dihedral group is a group $H$ with two disjoint subgroups $X$ and $Y$, each elementary abelian of order $2^n$, such that $H$ is generated by $X\cup Y$, and $H/H'\cong X\times Y$. In this paper, for each $n\geq 2$, we construct a mixed dihedral $2$-group $H$ of nilpotency class $3$ and order $2^a$ where $a=(n^3+n^2+4n)/2$, and a corresponding graph $Σ$, which is the clique graph of a Cayley graph of $H$. We prove that $Σ$ is semisymmetric, that is, ${\rm Aut}(Σ)$ acts transitively on the edges, but intransitively on the vertices, of $Σ$. These graphs are the first known semisymmetric gr…
We prove the existence of an upper bound on the asymptotic dimension of tree amalgamations of locally finite quasi-transitive connected graphs. This generalises a result of Dranishnikov for free products with amalgamation and a result of Tselekidis for HNN-extensions of groups to tree amalgamations of graphs. As a corollary, we obtain an upper bound on the asymptotic dimension of a multi-ended quasi-transitive locally finite graph based on any of their factorisations.
In this paper, we construct an infinite family of normal Cayley graphs, which are $2$-distance-transitive but neither distance-transitive nor $2$-arc-transitive. This answers a question raised by Chen, Jin and Li in 2019 and corrects a claim in a literature given by Pan, Huang and Liu in 2015.
Distance-regular graphs have many beautiful combinatorial properties. Distance-transitive graphs have very strong symmetries, and they are distance-regular, i.e. distance-transitivity implies distance-regularity. In this paper, we give similar results, i.e. for special $s$ and graphs with other restrictions we show that $s$-distance-transitivity implies distance-regularity.
We construct the first infinite families of locally arc transitive graphs with the property that the automorphism group has two orbits on vertices and is quasiprimitive on exactly one orbit, of twisted wreath type. This work contributes to Giudici, Li and Praeger's program for the classification of locally arc transitive graphs by showing that the star normal quotient twisted wreath category also contains infinitely many graphs.
It is well-known that a simple $G$-arc-transitive graph can be represented as a coset graph for the group $G$. This representation is extended to a construction of $G$-arc-transitive coset graphs $\Cos(G,H,J)$ with finite valency and finite edge-multiplicity, where $H, J$ are stabilisers in $G$ of a vertex and incident edge, respectively. Given a group $G=ła,z\r$ with $|z|=2$ and $|a|$ finite, the coset graph $\Cos(G,ła\r,łz\r)$ is shown, under suitable finiteness assumptions, to have exactly two different arc-transitive embeddings as a $G$-arc-transitive map $(V,E,F)$, namely, a {\it $G$-rota…
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 group on the vertex-set of the graph. We prove in this paper that the relative fixity of connected $2$-arc-transitive graphs of a fixed valence tends to $0$ as the number of vertices grows to infinity. We prove the same result for the class of arc-transitive graphs of a fixed prime valence, and more generally, for any class of arc-transitive locally-$L$ graphs, …
In this paper, all graphs are assumed to be finite. For $s\geq 1$ and a graph $\G$, if for every pair of isomorphic connected induced subgraphs on at most $s$ vertices there exists an automorphism of $\G$ mapping the first to the second, then we say that $\G$ is $s$-connected-set-homogeneous, and if every isomorphism between two isomorphic connected induced subgraphs on at most $s$ vertices can be extended to an automorphism of $\G$, then we say that $\G$ is $s$-connected-homogeneous. For $n\geq 1$, a graph $\G$ is said to be locally $2\K_n$ if the subgraph $[\G(u)]$ induced on the set of vert…
We investigate the class of infinite distance-transitive digraphs $D$ of finite out-valency. We show that if $D$ is a weakly descendant-homogeneous in such a class then either (1) $D$ has property $Z$ and the reachability relation is not universal; or (2) $D$ does not have property $Z$, the reachability relation is universal and $D$ has infinite in-valency. Also, we show that earlier results, proved in the context of highly-arc-transitive digraphs, hold under the weaker condition of distance-transitivity. Finally, we give a description of a subclass of the class distance-transitive weakly desc…
In 2011, Fang et al. in (J. Combin. Theory A 118 (2011) 1039-1051) posed the following problem: Classify non-normal locally primitive Cayley graphs of finite simple groups of valency $d$, where either $d\leq 20$ or $d$ is a prime number. The only case for which the complete solution of this problem is known is of $d=3$. Except this, a lot of efforts have been made to attack this problem by considering the following problem: Characterize finite nonabelian simple groups which admit non-normal locally primitive Cayley graphs of certain valency $d\geq4$. Even for this problem, it was only solved f…
For a non-complete graph $Γ$, a vertex triple $(u,v,w)$ with $v$ adjacent to both $u$ and $w$ is called a $2$-geodesic if $u\neq w$ and $u,w$ are not adjacent. Then $Γ$ is said to be $2$-geodesic transitive if its automorphism group is transitive on both arcs and 2-geodesics. In previous work the author showed that if a $2$-geodesic transitive graph $Γ$ is locally disconnected and its automorphism group $\Aut(Γ)$ has a non-trivial normal subgroup which is intransitive on the vertex set of $Γ$, then $Γ$ is a cover of a smaller 2-geodesic transitive graph. Thus the `basic' graphs to study are th…
A tournament is called locally transitive if the outneighbourhood and the inneighbourhood of every vertex are transitive. Equivalently, a tournament is locally transitive if it avoids the tournaments $W_4$ and $L_4$, which are the only tournaments up to isomorphism on four vertices containing a unique $3$-cycle. On the other hand, a sequence of tournaments $(T_n)_{n\in\mathbb{N}}$ with $|V(T_n)| = n$ is called almost balanced if all but $o(n)$ vertices of $T_n$ have outdegree $(1/2 + o(1))n$. In the same spirit of quasi-random properties, we present several characterizations of tournament sequ…
A code $C$ in the Hamming graph $\varGamma=H(m,q)$ is $2\it{\text{-neighbour-transitive}}$ if ${\rm Aut}(C)$ acts transitively on each of $C=C_0$, $C_1$ and $C_2$, the first three parts of the distance partition of $V\varGamma$ with respect to $C$. Previous classifications of families of $2$-neighbour-transitive codes leave only those with an affine action on the alphabet to be investigated. Here, $2$-neighbour-transitive codes with minimum distance at least $5$ and that contain "small" subcodes as blocks of imprimitivity are classified. When considering codes with minimum distance at least $5…
We consider a code to be a subset of the vertex set of a Hamming graph. The set of $s$-neighbours of a code is the set of vertices, not in the code, at distance $s$ from some codeword, but not distance less than $s$ from any codeword. A $2$-neighbour transitive code is a code which admits a group $X$ of automorphisms which is transitive on the $s$-neighbours, for $s=1,2$, and transitive on the code itself. We give a classification of $2$-neighbour transitive codes, with minimum distance $δ\geq 5$, for which $X$ acts faithfully on the set of entries of the Hamming graph.
We give necessary and sufficient conditions for lobe-transitivity of locally finite and locally countable graphs whose connectivity equals 1. We show further that, given any biconnected graph $Λ$ and a "code" assigned to each orbit of Aut($Λ$), there exists a unique lobe-transitive graph $Γ$ of connectivity 1 whose lobes are copies of $Λ$ and is consistent with the given code at every vertex of $Γ$. These results lead to necessary and sufficient conditions for a graph of connectivity $1$ to be edge-transitive and to be arc-transitive. Countable graphs of connectivity 1 the action of whose auto…
We prove a quantitative, finitary version of Trofimov's result that a connected, locally finite vertex-transitive graph G of polynomial growth admits a quotient with finite fibres on which the action of Aut(G) is virtually nilpotent with finite vertex stabilisers. We also present some applications. We show that a finite, connected vertex-transitive graph G of large diameter admits a quotient with fibres of small diameter on which the action of Aut(G) is virtually abelian with vertex stabilisers of bounded size. We also show that G has moderate growth in the sense of Diaconis and Saloff-Coste, …
