Large blocking sets in PG(2,q2)

Minimal blocking sets in $\mathrm{PG}(2,q^2)$ have size at most $q^3+1$. This result is due to Bruen and Thas and the bound is sharp, sets attaining this bound are called unitals. In this paper, we show that the second largest minimal blocking sets have size at most $q^3+1-(p-3)/2$, if $q=p$, $p\ge 67$, or $q=p^h$, $p>7$, $h>1$. Our proof also works for sets having at least one tangent at each of its points (that is, for tangency sets).     

Permutation trinomials over Fq3

We consider four classes of polynomials over the fields ${\mathbb{F}}_{q^3}$, $q=p^h$, $p>3$, $f_1(x)=x^{q^2+q-1}+A{x}^{q^2-q+1}+Bx$, $f_2(x)=x^{q^2+q-1}+A{x}^{q^3-q^2+q}+Bx$, $f_3(x)=x^{q^2+q-1}+A{x}^{q^2}-Bx$, $f_4(x)=x^{q^2+q-1}+A{x}^q-Bx$, where $A,B\in {\mathbb{F}}_q$. We find sufficient conditions on the pairs $(A,B)$ for which these polynomials permute ${\mathbb{F}}_{q^3}$ and we give lower bounds on the number of such pairs.     

Some new results on dimension and Bose distance for various classes of BCH codes

In this paper, we give the dimension and the minimum distance of two subclasses of narrow-sense primitive BCH codes over ${\mathbb{F}}_q$ with designed distance $\delta =a{q}^{m-1}-1(\text{resp. }\delta =a\frac{q^m-1}{q-1})$ for all $1\le a\le q-1$, where q is a prime power and $m>1$ is a positive integer. As a consequence, we obtain an affirmative answer to two conjectures proposed by C. Ding in 2015. Furthermore, using the previous part, we extend some results of Yue and Hu [16], and we give the dimension and, in some cases, the Bose distance for a large designed distance in the range $[a\frac{q^m-1}{q-1},a\frac{q^m-1}{q-1}+T]$ for $0\le a\le q-2$, where $T=q^{\frac{m+1}{2}}-1$ if m is odd, and $T=2q^{\frac{m}{2}}-1$ if m is even.     

Erdős matching conjecture for almost perfect matchings

In 1965 Erd?s asked, what is the largest size of a family of k-element subsets of an n-element set that does not contain a matching of size $s+1$? In this note, we improve upon a recent result of Frankl and resolve this problem for $s>101k^3$ and $(s+1)k?n<(s+1)(k+\frac{1}{100k})$.