The normal subgroup lattice of 2-transitive automorphism groups of linearly ordered sets

Using combinatorial and model-theoretic means, we examine the structure of normal subgroup lattices N(A()) of 2-transitive automorphism groups A() of infinite linearly ordered sets (, ). Certain natural sublattices of N(A()) are shown to be Stone algebras, and several first order properties of their dense and dually dense elements are characterized within the Dedekind-completion of (, ). As a consequence, A() has either precisely 5 or at least 2²¹ (even maximal) normal subgroups, and various other group- and lattice-theoretic results follow.