Regular and semi-regular representations of groups by posets

Abstract

By a result of Babai, with finitely many exceptions, every group $G$ admits a semi-regular poset representation with three orbits, that is, a poset $P$ with automorphism group $\text{Aut}(P)\simeq G$ such that the action of $\text{Aut}(P)$ on the underlying set is free and with three orbits. Among finite groups, only the trivial group and ${\mathbb{Z}}_2$ have a regular poset representation (i.e. semi-regular with one orbit), however many infinite groups admit such a representation. In this paper we study non-necessarily finite groups which have a regular representation or a semi-regular representation with two orbits. We prove that if $G$ admits a Cayley graph which is locally the Cayley graph of a free group, then it has a semi-regular representation of height 1 with two orbits. In this case we will see that any extension of the integers by $G$ admits a regular representation. Applications are given to finite simple groups, hyperbolic groups, random groups and indicable groups.

16 pages, 2 figures