Block-Transitive Point-Imprimitive t-Designs

We study block-transitive point-imprimitive t–(v, k, ) designs. It was showed by Cameron and Praeger that in such designs t = 2 or 3. In 1989, Delandtsheer and Doyen proved that a block-transitive point-imprimitive 2-design satisfies v (( ^k ₂)–1)². In this paper, we give a proof of the Cameron–Praeger conjecture which states that for t = 3 the stronger inequality v ( ^k ₂)+1 holds. We find two infinite families of 3-designs for which this bound is met. We also show that the above designs cannot have = 1, and that = 2 is possible only if v attains its maximal value, and various other restrictions are met.