On generators and representations of the sporadic simple groups

In this paper we determine the irreducible projective representations of sporadic simple groups over an arbitrary algebraically closed field F, whose image contains an almost cyclic matrix of prime-power order. A matrix M is called cyclic if its characteristic and minimum polynomials coincide, and we call M almost cyclic if, for a suitable a in F, M is similar to diag(a Id_h, M_1), where M_1 is cyclic and 0 <= h <= n. The paper also contains results on the generation of sporadic simple groups by minimal sets of conjugate elements.