Doubly transitive action and orbits in $X\times X$

group-theorypermutation-cyclesrepresentation-theory

Serre defines (in Linear Rep. of Finite Groups) the doubly transitivity as follows:

Let $G$ act on $X$ transitively and $|X|\ge 2$. We say that $G$ is doubly transitive on $X$ if for $x\neq y$ and $x'\neq y'$ in $X$, there is $g\in G$ such that $gx=x'$ and $gy=y'$.

After this, he asks to prove:

$G$ is doubly transitive on $X$ if and only if $X\times X$ has two orbits (under action $g(a,b)=(ga,gb)$): diagonal and its complement.

Question (I know proof of above statement, but question is different.)

(i) In definition of doubly transitive action, is it necessary to mention "let $G$ acts transitively on $X$''?

(ii) The definition itself says that the complement of diagonal is an orbit for definition of doubly transitive action; so, can we state the result stated by Serre as

$G$ is doubly transitive on $X$ if and only if complement of diagonal in $X\times X$ is an orbit (under action $g(a,b)=(ga,gb)$?

Best Answer

i. It is redundant to state that the action is transitive - showing that the action is transitive using the definition above is immediate by choosing $x=y', y=x'$. It is however a necessary condition for an action to be doubly transitive.

ii. Using your definition of doubly transitive, the proposition, and (i), you can restate the definition of doubly transitive to the one you wrote, but don't forget to also ask for $X$ to be of size at least 2.

Edit - There's a small gap in my answer for (ii) - When you don't require the action to be transitive, it's not clear that the diagonal is even an orbit. The answer is correct anyway, since if the diagonal is not an orbit, then its complement is also not an orbit (see David's comment).

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