On locally Hoffman-Singleton graphs (Q1892838)

This brief note proves that there does not exist any flag-transitive locally Hoffman-Singleton graph. A graph is said to be ``locally Hoffman- Singleton'' if the graph induced on the neighbors of each vertex is isomorphic to the Hoffman-Singleton graph (which has 50 vertices and is regular of degree 7). A graph is flag-transitive if its automorphism group is transitive on ordered edges (flag-transitive when the graph is viewed as a rank 2 geometry). The proof uses properties of \(P\Sigma U(3, 5)\), the automorphism group of the Hoffman-Singleton graph. Two corollaries are given: the non-existence of a distance-transitive locally Hoffman-Singleton graph, and the non-existence of certain related rank 3 geometries.