A characterization of the simple groupM 24

Some new Hadamard designs with 79 points admitting automorphisms of order 13 and 19

Abstract We have proved that there exists at least 2091 mutually nonisomorphic symmetric (79,39,19)-designs. In particular, 1896 of them admit an action of the nonabelian group of order 57, and an additional 194 an action of the nonabelian group of order 39.

Some Hadamard designs with parameters (71,35,17)

Up to isomorphisms there are precisely eight symmetric designs with parameters (71, 35, 17) admitting a faithful action of a Frobenius group of order 21 in such a way that an element of order 3 fixes precisely 11 points. Five of these designs have 84 and three have 420 as the order of the full automorphism group G. If |G| = 420, then the structure of G is unique and we have G = (Frob21 × Z5):Z4. In this case Z(G) = 〈1〉, G′ has order 35, and G induces an automorphism group of order 6 of Z7. If |G| = 84, then Z(G) is of order 2, and in precisely one case a Sylow 2-subgroup is elementary abelian. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 10: 144–149, 2002; DOI 10.1002/jcd.996

Symmetric (79, 27, 9)-designs Admitting a Faithful Action of a Frobenius Group of Order 39

AbstractIn this paper we present the classification of symmetric designs with parameters (79, 27, 9) on which a non-abelian group of order 39 acts faithfully. In particular, we show that such a group acts semi-standardly with 7 orbits. Using the method of tactical decompositions, we are able to construct exactly 1320 non-isomorphic designs. The orders of the full automorphism groups of these designs all divide 8 · 3 · 13.

A character-theory-free characterization of the Mathieu group M12

AbstractThe known characterization of the Mathieu group M12 by the structure of the centralizer of a 2-central involution is based on the application of the theory of exceptional characters and uses in addition a block theoretic result which asserts that a simple group of order |M12| is isomorphic to M12. The details of the proof of the latter result had never been published. We show here that M12 can be handled in a completely elementary and group theoretical way.

A Series of Hadamard Designs with Large Automorphism Groups

Abstract Whilst studying a certain symmetric (99, 49, 24)-design acted upon by a Frobenius group of order 21, it became clear that the design would be a member of an infinite series of symmetric (2q2 + 1, q2, (q2 − 1)/2)-designs for odd prime powers q. In this note, we present the definition of the series and give some information about the automorphism groups of its members.

The simple groups related to M24, II

The objective of this paper is to prove the following generalization of the main result in [2]: THeorem. Let G be a finite simple group which possesses an involution t such that the centralizer of t in G is isomorphic to the centralizer of an involution in H. Then G is isomorphic to L5(2), M24, or H.

A series of finite groups and related symmetric designs

For any odd prime power q = pe we study a certain solvable group G of order q2 · ((q-1)/2)2 · 2 and construct from its internal structure a symmetric design D with parameters (2q2+1, q2, (q2-1)/2) on which G acts as an automorphism group. As a consequence we find that the full automorphism group of D contains a subgroup of order |G| · e2.