Symmetric Graphs and their Quotients

Abstract

In this expository paper we describe a group theoretic characterization of arc-transitive graphs and their quotients. When passing from a symmetric graph to its quotient, much information is lost, but some of this information may be recovered from a certain combinatorial design on the blocks, as well as a bipartite graph between the blocks. We address the "extention problem" which asks, when is this additional information sufficient to recover the original graph?