Extremely line-primitive automorphism groups of finite linear spaces (Q2692971)

A finite linear space \(S = (\mathcal{P},\mathcal{L})\) consists of a finite set \(\mathcal{P}\) (whose elements are called \textit{points}) and a collection \(\mathcal{L}\) of subsets of \(\mathcal{P}\) (whose elements are called \textit{lines}) such that \begin{itemize} \item each pair of points is contained in exactly one line, \item each line contains at least two points. \end{itemize} One says that \(S\) is \textit{non-trivial} if every line contains at least three points and there are at least two lines, and \textit{regular} if each line is incident with \(k\) points for some fixed \(k\). The set \(\mathrm{Aut}(S)\) of all automorphisms of \(S\), namely permutations of \(\mathcal{P}\) which leave \(\mathcal{L}\) invariant, forms a group under composition. For any subgroup \(G\) of \(\mathrm{Aut}(S)\), it is well-known that line-transitivity implies point-transitivity [\textit{R. E. Block}, Math. Z. 96, 33--49 (1967; Zbl 0163.42304)], and that flag-transitivity implies point-primitivity [\textit{D. G. Higman} and \textit{J. E. McLaughlin}, Ill. J. Math. 5, 382--397 (1961; Zbl 0104.14702)]. There is also the so-called Delandtsheer-Doyen Conjecture [\textit{A. Delandtsheer}, Discrete Math. 68, 103--106 (1988; Zbl 0638.20001)], which states that line-primitivity implies point-primitivity. This conjecture is still open but is known to be true in many special cases. In the paper under review, the authors considered non-trivial regular linear spaces \(S\) and proved that extreme line-primitivity implies extreme point-primitivity. In the case that \(S\) admits an extremely line-primitive automorphism group \(G\), they showed that \(S\) must in fact be a finite projective plane, and they obtained both lower and upper bounds for the line rank of \(G\) in terms of the \textit{order} of \(S\) (namely the number of points on a line minus one). We refer the reader to the paper for the definitions of the technical terms.