Low Rank Representations and Graphs for Sporadic Groups

This book presents a complete classification of the transitive permutation representations of rank at most five of the sporadic simple groups and their automorphism groups together with a comprehensive study of the vertex-transitive graphs associated with these representations. Included is a list of all vertex-transitive distance-regular graphs on which a sporadic almost simple group acts with rank at most five. In this list are some new interesting distance-regular graphs of diameter two which are not distance-transitive. For most of the representations a presentation of the sporadic group is given with words in the given generators which generate a point stabiliser: this gives readers sufficient information to reconstruct and study the representations and graphs. Practical computational techniques appropriate for analysing finite vertex-transitive graphs are described carefully making the book an excellent starting point for learning about groups and the graphs on which they act.