On prime order automorphisms of generalized quadrangles

Afton, Santana F.; Swartz, Eric

doi:10.5802/alco.89

Afton, Santana F.¹; Swartz, Eric ¹

¹ Department of Mathematics College of William & Mary P.O. Box 8795 Williamsburg VA 23187-8795, USA

Algebraic Combinatorics, Volume 3 (2020) no. 1, pp. 143-160.

Abstract

In this paper, we study prime order automorphisms of generalized quadrangles. We show that, if $𝒬$ is a thick generalized quadrangle of order $(s, t)$ , where $s > t$ and $s + 1$ is prime, and $𝒬$ has an automorphism of order $s + 1$ , then

s ⌈⌈\frac{t^{2}}{s + 1}⌉ (\frac{s + 1}{t})⌉ \leq t (s + t),

with a similar inequality holding in the dual case when $t > s$ , $t + 1$ is prime, and $𝒬$ is a thick generalized quadrangle of order $(s, t)$ with an automorphism of order $t + 1$ .

In particular, if $s + 1$ is prime and if there exists a natural number $n$ such that

\frac{t^{2}}{n + 1} + t \leq s + 1 < \frac{t^{2}}{n},

then a thick generalized quadrangle $𝒬$ cannot have an automorphism of order $s + 1$ , and hence the automorphism group of $𝒬$ cannot be transitive on points. These results apply to numerous potential orders for which it is still unknown whether or not generalized quadrangles exist, showing that any examples would necessarily be somewhat asymmetric. Finally, we are able to use the theory we have built up about prime order automorphisms of generalized quadrangles to show that the automorphism group of a potential generalized quadrangle of order $(4, 12)$ must necessarily be intransitive on both points and lines.

Received: 2018-09-14
Revised: 2019-06-25
Accepted: 2019-06-29
Published online: 2020-02-12

Zbl

DOI: 10.5802/alco.89

Author's affiliations:

Afton, Santana F. ¹; Swartz, Eric ¹

¹ Department of Mathematics College of William & Mary P.O. Box 8795 Williamsburg VA 23187-8795, USA

License:

CC-BY 4.0

Copyrights: The authors retain unrestricted copyrights and publishing rights

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     title = {On prime order automorphisms of generalized quadrangles},
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Afton, Santana F.; Swartz, Eric. On prime order automorphisms of generalized quadrangles. Algebraic Combinatorics, Volume 3 (2020) no. 1, pp. 143-160. doi : 10.5802/alco.89. https://alco.centre-mersenne.org/articles/10.5802/alco.89/

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