Block-transitive symmetric designs and alternating groups (Q6165268)

In this paper, the authors study symmetric \((v, k, \lambda)\) designs admitting a block-transitive almost simple automorphism group with alternating socle. They show that there are only finitely many nontrivial symmetric \((v, k, \lambda)\) design \(\mathcal{D}\) with \(v\) odd and \(\lambda \geq 2\), that admit a block-transitive automorphism group \(G\) of almost simple type with alternating socle \(A_n\) and \(n \geq 5\). Moreover, if \(\lambda=2,5\), such designs do not exist; if \(\lambda=3\), then \(\mathcal{D}=\mathrm{PG}_2(3,2)\) and \(G=S_5,S_6,A_n \) \((n=5,6,7,8)\); if \(\lambda=4\), then \(\mathcal{D}\) is the complement of \(\mathrm{PG}_2(3,2)\) and \(G=S_5,S_6,A_n\) \((n=5,6,7,8)\).