On 7-valent symmetric Cayley graphs of finite simple groups (Q2084696)

Suppose \(G\) is a group and \(S\) is a subset of \(G\) for which \(S=\{g^{-1} \mid g \in S\}\) and \(S\) does not contain the identity of \(G\). A Cayley graph on \(G\), denoted by \(\mathrm{Cay}(G, S)\), with respect to \(S\) is the graph with vertex set \(G\) and the edge set \(\{\{g, sg\} \mid g \in G, s \in S\}\). The valency of a Cayley graph \(\Gamma = \mathrm{Cay}(G, S)\) is \(|S|\), and it is connected if and only if \(G=\langle S \rangle\). There are plenty of papers dealing with the classification of the symmetric Cayley graphs of non-abelian simple groups, and in most cases the classifications are conditional. In this paper, the authors try to investigate 7-valent symmetric Cayley graphs of finite simple groups. The following theorem is the main result of the paper. Theorem. Let \(G\) be a finite non-abelian simple group and let \(\Gamma = \mathrm{Cay}(G, S)\) be a symmetric Cayley graph on \(G\) with valency 7. For \(\alpha \in V \Gamma\), we have either \(\Gamma\) is a normal Cayley graph or one of the following holds: \begin{center} \begin{tabular}{ c c c } & \(\Aut\Gamma\) & \(G\) \\ \hline 1 & \([2^{18}].\mathrm{P}\Omega^+(12, 2)\) & \(\Omega(11, 2)\) \\ 2 & \((\mathbb{Z}_7 \rtimes \mathbb{Z}_3) \times A_8\) & \(\mathrm{PSL}(3, 2)\) \\ 3 & \(((\mathbb{Z}_7 \rtimes \mathbb{Z}_3) \times A_8) \rtimes \mathbb{Z}_2\) & \(\mathrm{PSL}(3, 2)\) \\ 4 & \(\mathbb{Z}_2.\mathrm{PSU}(6, 2)\) & \(\mathrm{PSU}(5, 2)\) \\ 5 & \(\mathbb{Z}_2^2.\mathrm{PSU}(6, 2)\) & \(\mathrm{PSU}(5, 2)\) \\ & \(\mathbb{Z}_4 \times \mathrm{PSU}(6, 2)\) & \\ 6 & \(\mathbb{Z}_2^4 \times \mathrm{Sp}(6, 4)\) & \(\mathrm{PSU}(4, 4)\) \\ 7 & \((\mathbb{Z}_7 \rtimes \mathbb{Z}_3) \times \mathrm{AGL}(3, 2)\) & \(\mathrm{PSL}(2, 7)\) \\ \hline \end{tabular} \end{center} \begin{itemize} \item [(1)] \(\Aut \Gamma\) acts quasiprimitively on \(V \Gamma\) with \(L = \mathrm{soc}(\Aut \Gamma)\) being a non-abelian simple group. And \((L, G) \cong (P\Omega^+(12, 2)\), \(\Omega(11, 2))\), \((\mathrm{Sp}(6, 4), \mathrm{PSU}(4, 4))\) or \((A7,A6)\). \item [(2)] There exists a maximal intransitive normal subgroup \(K\) of \(A=\Aut \Gamma\) such that the socle of \(A/K\), say \(\bar{L}\), is a simple group containing \(\bar{G} = GK/K \cong G\) properly. Moreover, one of the following holds. \begin{itemize} \item [(i)] \(\bar{L}\) is classical simple group. Then \((\Aut\Gamma, G)\) is one of the seven cases in the table above. \item [(ii)] Otherwise, up to isomorphism, we have either \((\Aut\Gamma, G) \cong (\mathbb{Z}_7 \times M_{24}, M_{23}),\) or \((\bar{L}, \bar{G}) \cong (A_n, A_{n-1})\) with \(\bar{L}_{\bar{\alpha}}\) has a subgroup of index \(n\) for \(\bar{\alpha} \in V\Gamma_K\). \end{itemize} \end{itemize}