Most primitive groups are full automorphism groups of edge-transitive hypergraphs

Abstract

We prove that, for a primitive permutation group G acting on a set X of size n, other than the alternating group, the probability that Aut (X,YG) = G for a random subset Y of X, tends to 1 as n → ∞. So the property of the title holds for all primitive groups except the alternating groups and finitely many others. This answers a question of M.H. Klin. Moreover, we give an upper bound n1/2+ε for the minimum size of the edges in such a hypergraph. This is essentially best possible.