Factorizations of Almost Simple Groups with a Solvable Factor, and Cayley Graphs of Solvable Groups
Cai Heng Li, Binzhou Xia
Abstract
A characterization is given for the factorizations of almost simple groups with a solvable factor. It turns out that there are only several infinite families of these nontrivial factorizations, and an almost simple group with such a factorization cannot have socle exceptional Lie type or orthogonal of minus type. The characterization is then applied to study <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="s"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mi>s</mml:mi> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">s</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> -arc-transitive Cayley graphs of solvable groups, leading to a striking corollary that, except for cycles, a non-bipartite connected <inline-formula content-type="math/mathml"> <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" alttext="3"> <mml:semantics> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> <mml:annotation encoding="application/x-tex">3</mml:annotation> </mml:semantics> </mml:math> </inline-formula> -arc-transitive Cayley graph of a finite solvable group is necessarily a normal cover of the Petersen graph or the Hoffman-Singleton graph.