Symmetric cubic graphs with non-solvable automorphism groups

Symmetric graphs of valency five and their basic normal quotients

All groups considered are finite. A group has a trivial Frattini subgroup if and only if every nontrivial normal subgroup has a proper supplement.The property is normal subgroup closed, but neither subgroup nor quotient closed. It is subgroup closed if and only if the group is elementary, i.e. all Sylow subgroups are elementary abelian. If G is solvable, then G and all its quotients have trivial Frattini subgroup if and only if every normal subgroup of G has a complement. For a nilpotent group, every nontrivial normal subgroup has a supplement if and only if the group is elementary abelian. Consequently, the center of a group in which every normal subgroup has a supplement is an elementary abelian direct factor.

1·1. We shall write for the class of groups all of whose non-trivial normal subgroups have finite index. Thus, rather obviously, finite groups, simple groups, and the infinite cyclic and dihedral groups all lie in the class . Other examples of -groups are to be found in a variety of contexts. The main result of Mennicke (8) shows that, for n ≥ 3, the factor group of SL(n, Z) by its centre is a -group, where SL(n, Z) denotes the unimodular group of all n × n invertible matrices with integer coefficients and with determinant 1. In McLain(7), an example is given of an infinite, locally finite, locally soluble -group, whose only non-trivial normal subgroups are the terms of its derived series, and in (4), P. Hall discusses an infinite -group, all of whose proper quotients are finite p-groups. If is a class of groups closed under taking homomorphic images, it is easily seen that the existence of an infinite -group satisfying the maximal condition for normal subgroups implies the existence of an infinite -group in the class , so that certain questions concerning the finiteness of groups satisfying the maximal condition for normal subgroups can be interpreted as questions about -groups.

We compare Aut(Q), the classical automorphism group of a countable dense linear order, with Autc(Q), the group of all computable automorphisms of such an order. They have a number of similarities, including the facts that every element of each group is a commutator and each group has exactly three nontrivial normal subgroups. However, the standard proofs of these facts in Aut(Q) do not work for Autc(Q). Also, Aut(Q) has three fundamental properties which fail in Autc(Q): it is divisible, every element is a commutator of itself with some other element, and two elements are conjugate if and only if they have isomorphic orbital structures.

Finite flag-transitive affine planes have received much attention during the past fifty years because of their connections with other combinatorial objects such as spreads, planar functions, semifields and linearized polynomials. In 1964, Foulser completely determined the automorphism groups of finite flag-transitive affine planes. If a flag-transitive affine plane has a solvable automorphism group, then the affine plane is called solvable. The non-solvable flag-transitive affine planes have been completely classified in the 1990s. But the complete classification for the solvable case seems far out of reach. All known solvable flag-transitive affine planes can be classified into two types: $\\mathcal{C}$-planes and $\\mathcal{H}$-planes, where $\\mathcal{H}$-planes only occur in the odd characteristic case. In this paper, we construct the first flag-transitive affine plane of order $2^9$ over its kernel $\\bF_{2^3}$, which is not of type $\\mathcal{C}$ and the largest Singer subgroup of the translation complement has order $(2^3-1)(2^9+1)/9$.

In answer to a question of P. Hall, we supply another construction of a group which is isomorphic to each of its non-trivial normal subgroups.

An m-Cayley graph $$\Gamma $$ over a group G is defined as a graph which admits G as a semi-regular group of automorphisms with m orbits. This generalises the notions of a Cayley graph (where $$m = 1$$ ) and a bi-Cayley graph (where $$m = 2$$ ). The m-Cayley graph $$\Gamma $$ over G is said to be normal if G is normal in the automorphism group $$\mathrm{Aut}(\Gamma )$$ of $$\Gamma $$ , and core-free if the largest normal subgroup of $$\mathrm{Aut}(\Gamma )$$ contained in G is the identity subgroup. In this paper, we investigate properties of symmetric m-Cayley graphs in the special case of valency 3, and use these properties to develop a computational method for classifying connected cubic core-free symmetric m-Cayley graphs. We also prove that there is no 3-arc-transitive normal Cayley graph or bi-Cayley graph (with valency 3 or more), which answers a question posed by Li (Proc Amer Math Soc 133:31–41 2005). Using our classification method, we give a new proof of the fact that there are exactly 15 connected cubic core-free symmetric Cayley graphs, two of which are Cayley graphs over non-abelian simple groups. We also show that there are exactly 109 connected cubic core-free symmetric bi-Cayley graphs, 48 of which are bi-Cayley graphs over non-abelian simple groups, and that there are 1, 6, 81, 462 and 3267 connected cubic core-free 1-arc-regular 3-, 4-, 5-, 6- and 7-Cayley graphs, respectively.

Finite 3-connected-set-homogeneous locally 2Kn graphs and s-arc-transitive graphs

Solvable Automorphism Groups and an Upper Bound for | A(G) |

Quotient-complete arc-transitive graphs

Edge-colourings of cubic graphs admitting a solvable vertex-transitive group of automorphisms

Fast Fourier analysis for abelian group extensions

In a graph $\Gamma$ with vertex set $V$, a subset $C$ of $V$ is called an $(a,b)$-perfect set if every vertex in $C$ has exactly $a$ neighbors in $C$ and every vertex in $V\setminus C$ has exactly $b$ neighbors in $C$, where $a$ and $b$ are nonnegative integers. In the literature $(0,1)$-perfect sets are known as perfect codes and $(1,1)$-perfect sets are known as total perfect codes. In this paper we prove that, for any finite group $G$, if a non-trivial normal subgroup $H$ of $G$ is a perfect code in some Cayley graph of $G$, then it is also an $(a,b)$-perfect set in some Cayley graph of $G$ for any pair of integers $a$ and $b$ with $0\leqslant a\leqslant|H|-1$ and $0\leqslant b\leqslant |H|$ such that $\gcd(2,|H|-1)$ divides $a$. A similar result involving total perfect codes is also proved in the paper.

Results are obtained concerning normal subgroups of the automorphism groups of certain infinite trees. These structures are mostly ℵo-categorical, and are trees in a poset-theoretic but not graph-theoretic sense. It is shown that the automorphism group has a smallest non-trivial normal subgroup, a largest proper normal subgroup, and at least 22ο normal subgroups between these two. We also obtain and use some results on groups of automorphisms of chains.

Quasi-semiregular automorphisms of cubic and tetravalent arc-transitive graphs