Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics 16 (2002), 43–69 c 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Manufactured in The Netherlands. Transitive Permutation Groups of Prime-Squared Degree EDWARD DOBSON
[email protected] Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762, USA DAVE WITTE
[email protected] Department of Mathematics, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078, USA Received November 7, 2000; Revised November 29, 2001 Abstract. We explicitly determine all of the transitive groups of degree p2, p a prime, whose Sylow p-subgroup is not isomorphic to the wreath product Z p Z p. Furthermore, we provide a general description of the transitive 2 groups of degree p whose Sylow p-subgroup is isomorphic to Z p Z p, and explicitly determine most of them. As applications, we solve the Cayley Isomorphism problem for Cayley objects of an abelian group of order p2, explicitly determine the full automorphism group of Cayley graphs of abelian groups of order p2, and find all nonnormal Cayley graphs of order p2. Keywords: permutation group, Cayley graph, p-group 1. Introduction In 1901, Burnside [5] proved the following theorem. Theorem 1 (Burnside, [5]) Let G be a transitive group of prime degree. Then either G is doubly transitive or G contains a normal Sylow p-subgroup. If G is a transitive group of prime degree and has a normal Sylow p-subgroup, then it is not difficult to show that G is permutation isomorphic to a subgroup of AGL(1, p). Similarly, it is also straightforward to show that if G is a transitive group of prime degree, then G has a normal Sylow p-subgroup if and only if G is solvable.