On the automorphism groups of rank-4 primitive coherent configurations

The minimal degree of a permutation group G is the minimum number of points not fixed by non-identity elements of G. Lower bounds on the minimal degree have strong structural consequences on G. Babai conjectured that if a primitive coherent configuration with n vertices is not a Cameron scheme, then its automorphism group has minimal degree $\ge cn$ for some constant $c>0$. In 2014, Babai proved the desired lower bound on the minimal degree of the automorphism groups of strongly regular graphs, thus confirming the conjecture for primitive coherent configurations of rank 3.

In this paper, we extend Babai's result to primitive coherent configurations of rank 4, confirming the conjecture in this special case. The proofs combine structural and spectral methods.

Recently (March 2022) Sean Eberhard published a class of counterexamples of rank 28 to Babai's conjecture and suggested to replace “Cameron schemes” in the conjecture with a more general class he calls “Cameron sandwiches”. Naturally, our result also confirms the rank 4 case of Eberhard's version of the conjecture.