Séminaire Lotharingien de Combinatoire, B79b (2018), 24 pp.

Nick Gill, Neil I. Gillespie, Cheryl E. Praeger and Jason Semeraro

Conway Groupoids, Regular Two-Graphs and Supersimple Designs

Abstract. A 2-(n,4,λ) design (Ω,B) is said to be supersimple if distinct lines intersect in at most two points. From such a design, one can construct a certain subset of Sym(Ω) called a "Conway groupoid". The construction generalizes Conway's construction of the groupoid M13. % One would like to classify all of the Conway groupoids constructed using supersimple designs. In this paper we classify a particular subclass, consisting of those groupoids which satisfy two additional properties: Firstly the set of collinear point-triples forms a regular two-graph, and secondly the symmetric difference of two intersecting lines is again a line. % The proof uses Hall's work on $3$-transposition groups of symplectic type, and Seidel's work on graphs that satisfy the triangle property.


Received: March 21, 2018. Accepted: May 18, 2018.

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