Vertex-primitive s-arc-transitive digraphs of symplectic groups

TL;DR

This paper proves that for finite symplectic groups, vertex-primitive s-arc-transitive digraphs cannot have s greater than 2, confirming a conjecture about the structure of such digraphs.

Contribution

It confirms the conjecture that s is at most 2 for finite vertex-primitive s-arc-transitive digraphs with symplectic automorphism groups.

Findings

s is at most 2 for symplectic groups

Confirmed conjecture for finite symplectic groups

Advances understanding of automorphism groups in digraphs

Abstract

A digraph is $s$-arc-transitive if its automorphism group is transitive on directed paths with $s$ edges, that is, on $s$-arcs. Although infinite families of finite $s$-arc transitive digraphs of arbitrary valency were constructed by the third author in 1989, existence of a vertex-primitive $2$-arc-transitive digraph was not known until an infinite family was constructed by the second author with Li and Xia in 2017. This led to a conjecture by the second author and Xia in 2018 that, for a finite vertex-primitive $s$-arc-transitive digraph, $s$ is at most $2$, together with their proof that it is sufficient to prove the conjecture for digraphs with an almost simple group of automorphisms. This paper confirms the conjecture for finite symplectic groups.