A census of highly symmetric combinatorial designs (Q2458258)

This article is part of a big project of the author to classify flag-transitive Steiner \(t\)-designs. The project started with the work of Buekenhout, Delandtsheer, Doyen, Kleidman, Liebeck, and Saxl, who obtained many results on flag-transitive Steiner 2-designs. In [\textit{M. Huber}, Adv. Geom. 5, No.~2, 195--221 (2005; Zbl 1076.51004) and J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 94, No.~1, 180--190 (2001; Zbl 0980.05014)], the author completely classified all flag-transitive Steiner 3-designs using the classification of the finite doubly transitive permutation groups, which in turn relies on the classification of the finite simple groups. In [\textit{M. Huber}, J. Algebr. Comb. 26, No.~2, 183--207 (2007; Zbl 1130.51001), reviewed above], the author presents the complete classification of all flag-transitive Steiner 4-designs. The flag-transitive Steiner 4-designs are either the Witt 4-\((11,5,1)\) design on which the Mathieu group \(M_{11}\) is acting, or the Witt 4-\((23,7,1)\) design on which the Mathieu group \(M_{23}\) is acting. This article gives the complete classification of the flag-transitive Steiner 5-designs and proves that there are no non-trivial flag-transitive Steiner 6-designs. They are either the Witt 5-\((12,6,1)\) design on which the Mathieu group \(M_{12}\) is acting, or the Witt 5-\((24,8,1)\) design on which the group \(\text{PSL}(2,23)\) or the Mathieu group \(M_{24}\) is acting. In this article, he also summarizes the complete determination of all non-trivial Steiner \(t\)-designs with \(t\geq 3\) admitting a flag-transitive group of automorphisms.