Inclusions of innately transitive groups into wreath products in product action with applications to 2-arc-transitive graphs (Q5964101)

This is highly technical paper that makes a contribution to the study of \(2\)-arc-transitive graphs constructible as a cover of some normal quotient. The authors investigate the case where a \(2\)-arc-transitive subgroup \(G\) of the automorphism group of the larger graph \(\Gamma\) is an innately transitive permutation group that can be embedded into a wreath product \((\operatorname{Sym }\Delta)\operatorname{wr }S_{\ell}\) acting in product action on \(V(\Gamma) = \Delta^{\ell}\) for some \(\ell\). They give a partial answer, which involves two cases: one in which just two graphs arise, namely a \(5\)-valent graph of order \(6^2\) (known as ``Sylvester's double six graph''), and a \(17\)-valent graph of order \(120^2\) with automorphism group \(\mathrm{Aut}(\mathrm{Sp}_4(4))\), and the other for which the existence of graphs is unresolved.