Pairwise transitive 2-designs

We classify the pairwise transitive 2-designs, that is, 2-designs such that a group of automorphisms is transitive on the following five sets of ordered pairs: point-pairs, incident point-block pairs, non-incident point-block pairs, intersecting block-pairs and non-intersecting block-pairs. These 2-designs fall into two classes: the symmetric ones and the quasisymmetric ones. The symmetric examples include the symmetric designs from projective geometry, the 11-point biplane, the Higman-Sims design, and designs of points and quadratic forms on symplectic spaces. The quasisymmetric examples arise from affine geometry and the point-line geometry of projective spaces, as well as several sporadic examples.Comment: 28 pages, updated after review proces

Codistances of 3-spherical buildings

We show that a 3-spherical building in which each rank 2 residue is connected far away from a chamber, and each rank 3 residue is simply 2-connected far away from a chamber, admits a twinning (i.e., is one half of a twin building) as soon as it admits a codistance, i.e., a twinning with a single chamber.Comment: 35 pages; revised after a referee's comment

Automorphisms and opposition in twin buildings

We show that every automorphism of a thick twin building interchanging the halves of the building maps some residue to an opposite one. Furthermore we show that no automorphism of a locally finite 2-spherical twin building of rank at least 3 maps every residue of one fixed type to an opposite. The main ingredient of the proof is a lemma that states that every duality of a thick finite projective plane admits an absolute point, i.e., a point mapped onto an incident line. Our results also hold for all finite irreducible spherical buildings of rank at least 3, and as a consequence we deduce that every involution of a thick irreducible finite spherical building of rank at least 3 has a fixed residue

Symmetry properties of subdivision graphs

The subdivision graph $S(\Sigma)$ of a graph $\Sigma$ is obtained from $\Sigma$ by `adding a vertex' in the middle of every edge of \Si. Various symmetry properties of $\S(\Sigma)$ are studied. We prove that, for a connected graph $\Sigma$, $S(\Sigma)$ is locally $s$-arc transitive if and only if $\Sigma$ is $\lceil\frac{s+1}{2}\rceil$-arc transitive. The diameter of $S(\Sigma)$ is $2d+\delta$, where $\Sigma$ has diameter $d$ and $0\leqslant \delta\leqslant 2$, and local $s$-distance transitivity of $\S(\Sigma)$ is defined for $1\leqslant s\leqslant 2d+\delta$. In the general case where $s\leqslant 2d-1$ we prove that $S(\Sigma)$ is locally $s$-distance transitive if and only if $\Sigma$ is $\lceil\frac{s+1}{2}\rceil$-arc transitive. For the remaining values of $s$, namely $2d\leqslant s\leqslant 2d+\delta$, we classify the graphs $\Sigma$ for which $S(\Sigma)$ is locally $s$-distance transitive in the cases, $s\leqslant 5$ and $s\geqslant 15+\delta$. The cases $\max\{2d, 6\}\leqslant s\leqslant \min\{2d+\delta, 14+\delta\}$ remain open

Line graphs and 22-geodesic transitivity

For a graph $\Gamma$, a positive integer $s$ and a subgroup G\leq \Aut(\Gamma), we prove that $G$ is transitive on the set of $s$-arcs of $\Gamma$ if and only if $\Gamma$ has girth at least $2(s-1)$ and $G$ is transitive on the set of $(s-1)$-geodesics of its line graph. As applications, we first prove that the only non-complete locally cyclic $2$-geodesic transitive graphs are the complete multipartite graph $K_{3[2]}$ and the icosahedron. Secondly we classify 2-geodesic transitive graphs of valency 4 and girth 3, and determine which of them are geodesic transitive