A tetravalent half-arc-transitive graph with non-abelian vertex stabilizer (Q1405101)

It is clear that the smallest admissible valency of a half-arc-transitive graph is 4, which is also the valency of the smallest half-arc-transitive graph, a graph on 27 vertices constructed by \textit{D. F. Holt} [J. Graph Theory 5, 201-204 (1981; Zbl 0423.05020)]. So far in all of the known examples of 4-valent half-arc-transitive graphs, vertex stabilizers are abelian groups, or more precisely, elementary abelian 2-groups. On the other hand, half-arc-transitive graphs with non-abelian vertex stabilizers are known to exist: for example the graphs constructed by \textit{I. Z. Bouwer} [Can. Math. Bull. 13, 231-237 (1970; Zbl 0205.54601)]. The object of the paper under review is to construct a 4-valent half-arc-transitive graph with vertex stabilizer isomorphic to the dihedral group \(D_8\). The idea for constructing such a graph lies on a connection between graphs admitting half-arc-transitive group actions and transitive permutation groups having non-self-paired suborbits. The constructed graph \(X^*\) in the main result of the paper under review (Theorem 1.1) is a connected 4-valent half-arc-transitive graph on 10752 vertices with vertex stabilizer isomorphic to \(D_8\) where \(\text{Aut} X^*\) is a transitive permutation group of degree 32 and order 86016. Some of the calculations in the proof are carried out with the help of the MAGMA algebra system [see \textit{W. Bosma} et al., J. Symb. Comput. 24, 235-265 (1997; Zbl 0898.68039)].