On collineation groups of a projective plane of prime order (Q1073334)

All known projective planes of prime order are Desarguesian. A weak form of the conjecture that they must all be Desarguesian is that the collineation group for non-Desarguesian planes of prime order must be very small. The main result of this paper is that if a non-Desarguesian projective plane of prime order p has a collineation group G whose order is divisible by p, then there is a non-trivial normal p-group. As a corollary, G must have a fixed point or line. A key part of the argument is to show that if G is a minimal counter-example, item G must be non- abelian simple. The first author has another paper on planes of prime order: ''Characterization of projective planes of small prime orders'', J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 41, 189-220, (1986).