The Saxl hypergraph of a permutation group

Abstract

Given a permutation group $G \le \mathrm{Sym}(\Omega)$, a subset $B$ of $\Omega$ is said to be a base if its pointwise stabiliser in $G$ is trivial, and the base size $b(G)$ is the minimum size of a base. In the notable case $b(G) = 2$, Burness and Giudici define the Saxl graph of $G$ to be the graph on $\Omega$ with bases of size 2 as edges. Later work of Freedman et al. extends this notion to any group for which $b(G) \ge 2$, taking the pairs of points contained in bases of size $b(G)$ for edges. We study an alternative generalisation, the Saxl hypergraph, where bases of size $b(G)$ are themselves the edges. In particular, we consider groups with complete Saxl hypergraphs, primitive groups whose Saxl hypergraphs have flag-spanning tours, and appropriate generalisations of Burness and Giudici's Common Neighbour Conjecture.