On the multiplicity-free actions of the sporadic simple groups. (Q947502)

A multiplicity-free action is just a (faithful) permutation representation whose (complex) character is multiplicity-free. Such representations are of particular importance in the study of distance-transitive and distance-regular graphs. In the case of the sporadic simple groups, and their almost quasi-simple extensions, a complete list of multiplicity-free actions is available, and a considerable amount of effort has been expended by many authors in studying them in detail. The paper under review describes a database of these representations, designed to be used in the computer algebra system GAP. The main component of the database in each case is the character table of the endomorphism ring, which is used to compute such things as collapsed adjacency matrices, eigenvalues, and so on. The main source of these character tables is the author's Habilitationschrift, although many of the smaller cases were calculated earlier by other people, and some of the larger cases involved collaboration. Indeed, the largest case of all, namely the Monster acting on nearly \(10^{20}\) points, was obtained by \textit{S. P. Norton} [Contemp. Math. 45, 271-285 (1985; Zbl 0577.20013)], and the next largest, namely the double cover of the Baby Monster acting on the more than \(10^{15}\) cosets of the Fischer group \(Fi_{23}\), remains open. The paper includes a description of the contents of the database, and how to access the data, as well as a brief overview of the methods used to compile the data, and some sample applications.