Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2004 iii Paper 2 3 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The orbits of on have a common size , because is transitive there. Suppose has a block system of block size , . Since and , . Let be the block of and another block. The union is a union of blocks and of r-element point-orbits, so its size is divisible by ; it is at most . Equality means each of the b point-orbits meets once. Thus fixes pointwise for . Interchanging also makes it fix . All two-point stabilizers have order . Therefore for every . Varying outside shows this same subgroup fixes every point, so it is trivial. We have proved uniform subdegrees force an imprimitive action to be Frobenius: no nonidentity element of fixes two points.
Write . The distinct point stabilizers meet only at , and . Thus the set of fixed-point-free elements of has sizeCount triples with and : there are , exactly the number of ordered distinct pairs. Conjugation by the two-transitive group makes every pair occur, hence each pair has a unique such . It follows that conjugates all elements of transitively.
Also , since acts freely on the remaining points. For each prime , Cauchy's theorem for finite groups supplies an order-p element of ; it cannot fix a point, since . Conjugacy of forces all these primes to coincide, so and every element of has order . A Sylow subgroup of has order , because . Every nonidentity element of is fixed-point-free, so . This uniquely described subgroup is normal in . Minimal normality of gives , and . Therefore is regular. The proof establishes closure through a Sylow subgroup; it does not assume that a set of derangements is automatically a subgroup.