The paper summarises existing theory and classifications for finite line-transitive linear spaces, develops the theory further, and organises it in a way that enables its effective application. The starting point is a...The paper summarises existing theory and classifications for finite line-transitive linear spaces, develops the theory further, and organises it in a way that enables its effective application. The starting point is a theorem of Camina and the fifth author that identifies three kinds of line-transitive automorphism groups of linear spaces. In two of these cases the group may be imprimitive on points, that is, the group leaves invariant a nontrivial partition of the point set. In the first of these cases the group is almost simple with point-transitive simple socle, and may or may not be point-primitive, while in the second case the group has a non-trivial point-intransitive normal subgroup and hence is definitely point-imprimitive. The theory presented here focuses on point-imprimitive groups. As a non-trivial application a classification is given of the point-imprimitive, line-transitive groups, and the corresponding linear spaces, for which the greatest common divisor gcd（k, v - 1） ≤ 8, where v is the number of points, and k is the line size. Motivation for this classification comes from a result of Weidong Fang and Huffing Li in 1993, that there are only finitely many non-trivial point-imprimitive, linetransitive linear spaces for a given value of gcd（k, v - 1）. The classification strengthens the classification by Camina and Mischke under the much stronger restriction k ≤ 8： no additional examples arise. The paper provides the backbone for future computer-based classifications of point-imprimitive, line- transitive linear spaces with small parameters. Several suggestions for further investigations are made.展开更多
基金Supported by Australian Research Council(Grant Nos. DP0557587 and DP0209706)The fifth author is supported by Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship FF0776186The sixth author is partly supported by the NSF of Guangdong Province
文摘The paper summarises existing theory and classifications for finite line-transitive linear spaces, develops the theory further, and organises it in a way that enables its effective application. The starting point is a theorem of Camina and the fifth author that identifies three kinds of line-transitive automorphism groups of linear spaces. In two of these cases the group may be imprimitive on points, that is, the group leaves invariant a nontrivial partition of the point set. In the first of these cases the group is almost simple with point-transitive simple socle, and may or may not be point-primitive, while in the second case the group has a non-trivial point-intransitive normal subgroup and hence is definitely point-imprimitive. The theory presented here focuses on point-imprimitive groups. As a non-trivial application a classification is given of the point-imprimitive, line-transitive groups, and the corresponding linear spaces, for which the greatest common divisor gcd（k, v - 1） ≤ 8, where v is the number of points, and k is the line size. Motivation for this classification comes from a result of Weidong Fang and Huffing Li in 1993, that there are only finitely many non-trivial point-imprimitive, linetransitive linear spaces for a given value of gcd（k, v - 1）. The classification strengthens the classification by Camina and Mischke under the much stronger restriction k ≤ 8： no additional examples arise. The paper provides the backbone for future computer-based classifications of point-imprimitive, line- transitive linear spaces with small parameters. Several suggestions for further investigations are made.
