Highly transitive imprimitivities. (Q2496849)

The study of subfactors of von Neumann algebras led the authors to the problem of considering finite groups \(G\) containing two maximal subgroups \(H\) and \(K\) such that \(G\neq HK\), and such that the action of \(G\) on the space of cosets of \(G\) modulo \(H\cap K\) has small rank \(r\). They show that \(r\) is at least \(6\) and determine all possibilities for \(r=6\) completely (modulo the core of \(H\cap K\) in \(G\)): in this case the action of \(G\) on the cosets of \(G\) modulo \(H\cap K\) corresponds to the action of a flag transitive collineation group on the set of flags of a Desarguesian projective plane. For \(r=7\) an interesting special case is singled out which is closely related to \(4\)-transitive simple permutation groups. In addition, some other interesting properties of the general situation are discovered.