Fixed point ratios for finite primitive groups and applications (Q2105748)

Let \(G \leq \mathrm{Sym}(\Omega)\) be a finite transitive permutation group with point stabilizer \(H\). If \(x \in G\) the \textit{fixed point ratio} of \(x\) is \(\mathrm{fpr}(x)=|C_{\Omega}(x)|\cdot|\Omega|^{-1}=|x^{G} \cap H|\cdot |x^{G}|^{-1}\). In this paper the authors study fixed point ratios in the setting where \(G\) is a primitive permutation group on \(\Omega\). The structure and action of a primitive group is described by the Aschbacher and O'Nan-Scott theorem, which divides the finite primitive groups into eight families and which constitutes an essential tool for proving the authors' results. The main theorem of this paper is Theorem 1 (Table 6 is presented in Section 5.1 and it is too long to be reported here): Let \(G \leq \mathrm{Sym}(\Omega)\) be a finite primitive permutation group with point stabilizer \(H\) and let \(x \in G\) be an element of prime order \(r\). Then either \(\mathrm{fpr}(x) \leq (r+1)^{-1}\) or one of the following holds (up to permutation isomorphism): \begin{itemize} \item[(i)] \(G\) is almost simple and one of the following holds: \begin{itemize} \item[(a)] \(G = S_{n}\) or \(A_{n}\) acting on \(\ell\)-element subsets of \(\{1, \ldots , n \}\) with \(1 \leq \ell < n/2\); \item[(b)] \(G = S_{n}\), \(H = S_{n/2} \wr S_{2}\), \(x\) is a transposition and \(\mathrm{fpr}(x)=\frac{1}{3}+\frac{n-4}{6(n-1)}\); \item[(c)] \(G=M_{22}:2\), \(H=L_{2}(4).2_{2}\), \(x \in \mathsf{2B}\) and \(\mathrm{fpr}(x)=\frac{4}{11}\); \item[(d)] \(G\) is classical in a subspace action and \((G, H, x, \mathrm{fpr}(x))\) is listed in Table 6. \end{itemize} \item[(ii)] \(G = V:H\) is an affine group with socle \(V= (C_{p})^{d}\) and point stabilizer \(H \leq GL_{d}(p)\), \(r=p\), \(x\) is conjugate to a transvection in \(H\) and \(\mathrm{fpr}(x) =r^{-1}\). \item[(iii)] \(G =L \wr S_{k}\) is a product type primitive group with its product action on \(\Omega=\Gamma^{k}\), where \(k \geq 2\) and \(L \leq \mathrm{Sym}(\Gamma)\) is one of the almost simple groups in (i). \end{itemize} A consequence of Theorem 1 is Corollary 2: Let \(G\) be a finite primitive permutation group and let \(x\in G\) be an element of prime order \(r\). Then either \(\mathrm{fpr}(x) \leq (r+1)^{-\frac{1}{2}}\) or \((A_{n})^{k} \trianglelefteq G \leq S_{n} \wr S_{k}\) with \(k \geq 1\), where the action of \(S_{n}\) is on \(\ell\)-element subsets of \(\{1, \ldots , n \}\) and the wreath product has the product action of degree \(\binom{n}{\ell}^{k}\). Unfortunately, the statements of Theorems 4, 5 and 6 are too involved to report here.