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A coset geometry representation of regular dessins is established, and employed to describe quotients and coverings of regular dessins and surfaces. A characterization is then given of face-quasiprimitive regular dessins as coverings of unicellular regular dessins. It shows that there are exactly three O'Nan-Scott-Praeger types of face-quasiprimitive regular dessins which are smooth coverings of unicellular regular dessins, leading to new constructions of interesting families of regular dessins. Finally, a problem of determining smooth Schur covering of simple groups is initiated by studying coverings between $\SL(2,p)$ and $\PSL(2,p)$, giving rise to interesting regular dessins like Fibonacci coverings.

The edges surrounding a face of a map $M$ form a cycle $C$, called the boundary cycle of the face, and $C$ is often not a simple cycle. If the map $M$ is arc-transitive, then there is a cyclic subgroup of automorphisms of $M$ which leaves $C$ invariant and is bi-regular on the edges of the induced subgraph $[C]$; that is to say, $C$ is a symmetrical Euler cycle of $[C]$. In this paper we determine the family of graphs (which may have multiple edges) whose edge-sets can be sequenced to form a symmetrical Euler cycle. We first classify all graphs which have a cyclic subgroup of automorphisms acting bi-regularly on edges. We then apply this classification to obtain the graphs possessing a symmetrical Euler cycle, and therefore are the (only) candidates for the induced subgraphs of the boundary cycles of the faces of arc-transitive maps., Comment: 31 pages

Let $G$ be a permutation group on a set $\Omega$ and recall that a base for $G$ is a subset of $\Omega$ such that its pointwise stabiliser is trivial. In a recent paper, Burness and Giudici introduced the Saxl graph of $G$, denoted $\Sigma(G)$, with vertex set $\Omega$ and two vertices adjacent if they form a base. If $G$ is transitive, then $\Sigma(G)$ is vertex-transitive and it is natural to consider its valency (which we refer to as the valency of $G$). In this paper we present a general method for computing the valency of any finite transitive group and we use it to calculate the exact valency of every primitive group with stabiliser a Frobenius group with cyclic kernel. As an application, we calculate the valency of every almost simple primitive group with an alternating socle and soluble stabiliser and we use this to extend results of Burness and Giudici on almost simple primitive groups with prime-power or odd valency.

A skew-morphism of a finite group $G$ is a permutation $\s$ on $G$ fixing the identity element, and for which there exists an integer function $\pi$ on $G$ such that $\s(xy)=\s(x)\s^{\pi(x)}(y)$ for all $x,y\in G$. It has been known that given a skew-morphism $\s $ of $G$, the product of $\lg \s \rg$ with the left regular representation of $G$ forms a permutation group on $G$, called the skew-product group of $\s$. The skew-morphism was introduced as an algebraic tool to investigate regular Cayley maps. In this paper, the skew-product groups are characterized, for all skew-morphisms of finite nonabelian characteristically simple groups (see Theorem 1.1) and correspondingly the Cayley maps on these groups are characterized (see Theorem 1.5)., Comment: 18 Pages

A subset $C$ of the vertex set of a graph $\Gamma$ is called a perfect code in $\Gamma$ if every vertex of $\Gamma$ is at distance no more than $1$ to exactly one vertex of $C$. A subset $C$ of a group $G$ is called a perfect code of $G$ if $C$ is a perfect code in some Cayley graph of $G$. In this paper we give sufficient and necessary conditions for a subgroup $H$ of a finite group $G$ to be a perfect code of $G$. Based on this, we determine the finite groups that have no nontrivial subgroup as a perfect code, which answers a question by Ma, Walls, Wang and Zhou.

We construct a connected cubic nonnormal Cayley graph on $\mathrm{A}_{2^m-1}$ for each integer $m\geqslant4$ and determine its full automorphism group. This is the first infinite family of connected cubic nonnormal Cayley graphs on nonabelian simple groups.