Halving Steiner 2-designs

A Steiner 2-design S(2,k,v) is said to be halvable if the block set can be partitioned into two isomorphic sets. This is equivalent to an edge-disjoint decomposition of a self-complementary graph G on v vertices into K_ks. The obvious necessary condition of those orders v for which there exists a halvable S(2,k,v) is that v admits the existence of an S(2,k,v) with an even number of blocks. In this paper, we give an asymptotic solution for various block sizes. We prove that for any k?5 or any Mersenne prime k, there is a constant number v₀ such that if v>v₀ and v satisfies the above necessary condition, then there exists a halvable S(2,k,v). We also show that a halvable S(2,2ⁿ,v) exists for over a half of possible orders. Some recursive constructions generating infinitely many new halvable Steiner 2-designs are also presented.