Alternating Groups Acting on Finite Linear Spaces (Q4418971)

A (finite) linear space is a pair \(S =({\mathcal P}, {\mathcal L})\) consisting of a (finite) set \(\mathcal P\) of points and a set of distinguished subsets of points, called lines such that any two distinct points of \(S\) belong to exactly one line of \(S\), any line has at least two points and there are at least two lines. A linear space is non-trivial if there is a line with more than two points. The paper under review is part of a project to classify groups and linear spaces where the group acts transitively on the lines of the space. The starting point is a previous result of two of the authors \textit{A. R. Camina} and \textit{C. E. Praeger} [Aequationes Math. 61, 221-232 (2001; Zbl 1058.20002)] which shows that the study of line-transitive finite linear spaces can be reduced to three cases, distinguishable by properties of the action of the point-set \(\mathcal P\). The three cases are the following: (1) \(G\) is of affine type in the sense that it has an \(\dots\) abelian transitive normal subgroup; (2) \(G\) has an intransitive minimal normal subgroup; and (3) \(G\) is almost simple, in the sense that there is a simple transitive normal subgroup \(T\) in \(G\) whose centraliser is trivial, so that \(T\trianglelefteq G\leq \text{Aut} T\). The authors treat almost simple groups in which \(T\) is an alternating group. Their main result reads as follows: Suppose that \(T\trianglelefteq G\leq \text{Aut} T\), where \(T \cong \text{Alt}(n)\) and \(n\geq 5\). If \(G\) acts as a line-transitive automorphism group of a non-trivial linear space \(S\) then \(S = \text{PG}_1(3, 2)\) and \(G=\text{Alt}(7)\) or \(G = \text{Alt}(8)\).