Two local conditions on the vertex stabiliser of arc-transitive graphs and their effect on the Sylow subgroups

Abstract

In this paper we study $G$-arc-transitive graphs $Δ$ where the permutation group $G_x^{Δ(x)}$ induced by the stabiliser $G_x$ of the vertex $x$ on the neighbourhood $Δ(x)$ satisfies the two conditions given in the introduction. We show that for such a $G$-arc-transitive graph $Δ$, if $(x,y)$ is an arc of $Δ$, then the subgroup $G_{x,y}^{[1]}$ of $G$ fixing pointwise $Δ(x)$ and $Δ(y)$ is a $p$-group for some prime $p$. Next we prove that every $G$-locally primitive (respectively quasiprimitive, semiprimitive) graph satisfies our two local hypotheses. Thus this provides a new Thompson-Wielandt-like theorem for a very large class of arc-transitive graphs. Furthermore, we give various families of $G$-arc-transitive graphs where our two local conditions do not apply and where $G_{x,y}^{[1]}$ has arbitrarily large composition factors.