On solvable minimally transitive permutation groups. (Q2384036)

The authors investigate properties of finite transitive permutation groups \((G,\Omega)\) in which all proper subgroups of \(G\) act intransitively on \(\Omega\). In particular they consider solvable groups and study more generally minimally transitive representations which may or may not be faithful. Any transitive group contains minimally transitive subgroups and therefore it would be unreasonable to expect full classifications in general, but under suitable restrictions some general results can be obtained. For instance, a simple description is given of the minimally transitive representations of nilpotent groups. For faithful action the primes dividing the order of a solvable group must divide the degree. The authors are interested in reduction theorems, for example they prove a general splitting principle reducing representations of non-nilpotent groups to representations of subgroups, generally involving fewer primes. A good result is also obtained for actions of square-free degree extending the work of Suprunenko and Kopylova, who studied the groups of degree \(pq\) with \(p\) and \(q\) primes.