Show that each point in $V$ has the same out valency in $\Omega$

43 Views Asked by At

Here is a statement from the book:

Let G be a group of permutations that acts transitively on $V$, a set of vertices. Let $\Omega$ be an orbit of $G$ on $V\times V$ that is not symmetric (so $\Omega \neq \Omega^T$). Then $\Omega$ is an oriented graph $G$ acts transitively on its vertices. Hence each point in $V$ has the same out-valency and the same in-valency.

I am trying to show that the latter part is true, and it's been tough. Doing any sort of matchings of arcs from $(x,y)$ to $(a,b)$ for some $x,a \in V$ proves to be tough since we have a lot of $g$'s and any edge $(x,y)$ can be mapped to any edge $(a,b)$ by choosing (possibly more than one choice) a $g \in G$ such that $g(x) = a, g(y) = b$.

One avenue of attack is this: Say $x,a \in V$. We know that $G_x \leq G$. Since the set of $g \in G$ such that $g(x) = a$ is a right coset of $G_x$, we can denote $G_{x \rightarrow a} = \lbrace g : g(x) = a \rbrace$. Now since $G$ is transitive and $\Omega$ is an orbital, we know that if $(a,b) \in \Omega, \exists g \in G$ such that $(x,y)^g = (a,b)$. This $g$ is also in $G_{x \rightarrow a}$. So if $\langle x \rangle$ are all the out-arcs of $x$, then $G_{x \rightarrow a}$ applied to $\langle x \rangle$ will be the set of edges $\langle a \rangle$. So $g$ can be viewed as a permutation between $y \in V : (x,y) \in \Omega$ and $b \in V : (a,b) \in \Omega$. Since $g$ is a permutation, the map is 1-1. So the sets must be the same. Similar logic can be applied to obtain the same result for in-arcs.

This seems to be over-complicated for a statement in the book that is not proven. Am I missing a much simpler proof for this statement?

PS. Sorry for the excessive notation, I tried my best to be as precise and as clean as possible. Thanks!

1

There are 1 best solutions below

0
On BEST ANSWER

(It is not clear from your question how you get the orientations of each edge from the automorphism group, since if there is an element of $G$ sending $(a_{1},b_{1}) \mapsto (a_{2},b_{2})$ then there is also an element sending $(a_{2},b_{2}) \mapsto (a_{1},b_{1})$. So I am going to assume that this orientation is defined in a way so that the action of $G$ gives an automorphism group of the oriented graph.)

It is immediate that $G$ acts transitively on $\Omega$. The action of $G$ gives an automorphism group of the oriented graph. Since automorphisms must send a vertex $v$ to another vertex with the same in-degree and out-degree, the existence of a vertex-transitive automorphism group forces every vertex to have the same in- and out-degree.