More cyclic triplewhist tournaments

We extend the set of values of n for which it is known that a Z-cyclic triple whist tournament for 4n players exists by proving that if there exists such a tournament for q + 1 players, where q ≡ 3 (mod 4) is prime, then there exists such a tournament for qp^a1₁…p^an_n + 1 players, whenever the p_i are primes ≡ 5 (mod 8). © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

On the existence of triplewhist tournaments TWh(v)

It is well known that a triplewhist tournament TWh(v) exists only if v ≡ 0 or 1 (mod 4) and v ¬ 5, 9. In this article, we introduce a new concept TWh-frame and use it to show that the necessary condition for the existence of a TWh(v) is also sufficient with a handful possible exceptions of v ∞ {12, 56} ∪ {13, 17, 45, 57, 65, 69, 77, 85, 93, 117, 129, 133, 153}. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Combin Designs 5: 249–256, 1997     

Existence of directed triplewhist tournaments with the three person property

A directed triplewhist tournament on v players, briefly DTWh(v), is said to have the three person property if no two games in the tournament have three common players. We briefly denote such a design as a 3PDTWh(v). In this paper, we show that a 3PDTWh(v) exists whenever v>17 and with few possible exceptions.     

Z-cyclic triplewhist tournaments when the number of players involves primes of the form 8u + 5

When the number of players, v, in a whist tournament, Wh(v), is ≡ 1 (mod 4) the only instances of a Z-cyclic triplewhist tournament, TWh(v), that appear in the literature are for v = 21,29,37. In this study we present Z-cyclic TWh(v) for all v ∈ T = {v = 8u + 5: v is prime, 3 ≤ u ≤ 249}. Additionally, we establish (1) for all v ∈ T there exists a Z-cyclic TWh(vⁿ) for all n ≥ 1, and (2) if v_i ∈ T, i = 1,…,n, there exists a Z-cyclic TWh(v… v) for all ?_i ≥ 1. It is believed that these are the first instances of infinite classes of Z-cyclic TWh(v), v ≡ 1 (mod 4). © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Triplewhist tournaments with the three person property

The necessary conditions for existence of a triplewhist tournament TWh(v) are . By the efforts of many authors through a century, these conditions are shown to be sufficient except for v=5,9,12,13 and possibly for v=17. A triplewhist tournament Wh(v) is said to have the three person property if any two games in the tournament do not have three common players. We briefly denote such a design as a 3PTWh(v). In this paper, we extend the known existence result for TWh(v)s and show that the necessary conditions for existence of a 3PTWh(v), namely, v?8 and , are also sufficient except for v=9,12,13 and possibly for v=17.     

On the decomposition of λK into regular tournaments of order 5

An RTD[5,λ; v] is a decomposition of the complete symmetric directed multigraph, denoted by λK, into regular tournaments of order 5. In this article we show that an RTD[5,λ; v] exists if and only if (v?1)λ ≡ 0 (mod 2) and v(v?1)λ ≡ 0 (mod 10), except for the impossible case (v,λ) = (15,1). Furthermore, we show that for each v ≡ 1,5 (mod 20), v ≠ 5, there exists a B[5,2; v] which is not RT₅-directable. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Existence of Z-cyclic 3PDTWh(<Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>) for Prime <Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis> ≡ 1 (mod 4)

A directed triplewhist tournament on p players over Z _p is said to have the three-person property if no two games in the tournament have three common players. We briefly denote such a design as a 3PDTWh(p). In this paper, we investigate the existence of a Z-cyclic 3PDTWh(p) for any prime p ≡ 1 (mod 4) and show that such a design exists whenever p ≡ 5, 9, 13 (mod 16) and p ≥ 29. This result is obtained by applying Weil’s theorem. In addition, we also prove that a Z-cyclic 3PDTWh(p) exists whenever p ≡ 1 (mod 16) and p < 10, 000 except possibly for p = 257, 769. Gennian Ge’s Research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 10471127, Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. R604001, and the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry.     

Coloring BIBDs with block size 4

It is shown that for each integer m ≥ 1 there exists a lower bound, v_m, with the property that for all v ≥ v_m with v ≡ 1, 4 (mod 12) there exists an m-chromatic S(2, 4, v) design. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Combin Designs 6: 403–409, 1998     

Completing the spectrum for LGDD (mv)

In this article, we construct LGDD(m^v) for v ≡ 2 (mod 6) and m ≡ 0 (mod 6) by constructing the missing essential values 6^v, v = 8, 14, 26, 50. Thus an LGDD(m^v) exists if and only if v(v - 1)m² ≡ 0 (mod 6), (v - 1)m ≡ 0 (mod 2) and (m, v) ≠ (1, 7). © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Existence of Z-cyclic 3PTWh (p) for any Prime p≡ 1 (mod 4)

We show that a Z-cyclic triplewhist tournament on p players with three-person property, briefly 3PTWh(p), exists for any prime p≡ 1 (mod 4) with the only exceptions of p=5,13,17.     

3-(v, 4, 1) covering designs with chromatic numbers 2 and 3

A t-(v, k, λ) covering design is a pair (X, B) where X is a v-set and B is a collection of k-sets in X, called blocks, such that every t element subset of X is contained in at least λ blocks of B. The covering number, C_λ(t, k, v), is the minimum number of blocks a t-(v, k, λ) covering design may have. The chromatic number of (X, B) is the smallest m for which there exists a map φ: X → Z_m such that ∣φ((β)∣ ≥2 for all β ∈ B, where φ(β) = {φ(x): x ∈ β}. The system (X, B) is equitably m-chromatic if there is a proper coloring φ with minimal m for which the numbers ∣φ^?1(c)∣ c ∈ Z_m differ from each other by at most 1. In this article we show that minimum, (i.e., ∣B∣ = C λ (t, k, v)) equitably 3-chromatic 3-(v, 4, 1) covering designs exist for v ≡ 0 (mod 6), v ≥ 18 for v ≥ 1, 13 (mod 36), v ≡ 13 and for all numbers v = n, n + 1, where n ≡ 4, 8, 10 (mod 12), n ≥ 16; and n = 6.5^a 13^b 17^c ?4, a + b + c > 0, and n = 14, 62. We also show that minimum, equitably 2-chromatic 3-(v, 4, 1) covering designs exist for v ≡ 0, 5, 9 (mod 12), v ≥ 0, v = 2.5^a 13^b 17^c + 1, a + b + c > 0, and v = 23. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Quadruple systems containing AG(3,2)

A quadruple system of order v, denoted QS(v) is an ordered pair (X, Q) where X is a set of cardinality v and Q is a set of 4-subsets of X called blocks, with the property that every 3-subset of X is contained in a unique block. The points and planes of the affine geometry AG(3, 2) form a QS(8). We prove that a QS(v) containing a proper subsystem isomorphic to AG(3, 2) exists if and only if v?16 and v≡2 or 4 (mod 6).     

Some results on (v,{5,w*})-pbds

In this article, we construct pairwise balanced designs (PBDs) on v points having blocks of size five, except for one block of size w ? {17,21,25,29,33}. A necessary condition for the existence of such a PBD is v ? 4w + 1 and (1) v ≡ 1 or 5 (mod 20) for w = 21, 25; (2) v ≡ 9 or 17 (mod 20) for w = 17,29; (3) v ≡ 13 (mod 20) for w = 33. We show that these necessary conditions are sufficient with at most 25 possible exceptions of (v,w). We also show that a BIBD B(5, 1; w) can be embedded in some B(5, 1; v) whenever v ≡ w ≡ 1 or 5 (mod 20) and v ? 5w ? 4, except possibly for (v, w) = (425, 65). © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Doyen–Wilson theorem for nested Steiner triple systems

The obvious necessary conditions for the existence of a nested Steiner triple system of order v containing a nested subsystem of order w are v ≥ 3w + 4 and v ≡ w ≡ 1 (mod 6). We show that these conditions are also sufficient. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

On k‐ary spanning trees of tournaments

It is well known that every tournament contains a Hamiltonian path, which can be restated as that every tournament contains a unary spanning tree. The purpose of this article is to study the general problem of whether a tournament contains a k‐ary spanning tree. In particular, we prove that, for any fixed positive integer k, there exists a minimum number h(k) such that every tournament of order at least h(k) contains a k‐ary spanning tree. The existence of a Hamiltonian path for any tournament is the same as h(1) = 1. We then show that h(2) = 4 and h(3) = 8. The values of h(k) remain unknown for k ≥ 4. © 1999 John & Sons, Inc. J Graph Theory 30: 167–176, 1999     

Pancyclic arcs and connectivity in tournaments

A tournament is an orientation of the edges of a complete graph. An arc is pancyclic in a tournament T if it is contained in a cycle of length l, for every 3 ≤ l ≤ |T|. Let p(T) denote the number of pancyclic arcs in a tournament T. In 4 , Moon showed that for every non‐trivial strong tournament T, p(T) ≥ 3. Actually, he proved a somewhat stronger result: for any non‐trivial strong tournament h(T) ≥ 3 where h(T) is the maximum number of pancyclic arcs contained in the same hamiltonian cycle of T. Moreover, Moon characterized the tournaments with h(T) = 3. All these tournaments are not 2‐strong. In this paper, we investigate relationship between the functions p(T) and h(T) and the connectivity of the tournament T. Let p_k(n) := min {p(T), T k‐strong tournament of order n} and h_k(n) := min{h(T), T k‐strong tournament of order n}. We conjecture that (for k ≥ 2) there exists a constant α_k> 0 such that p_k(n) ≥ α_kn and h_k(n) ≥ 2k+1. In this paper, we establish the later conjecture when k = 2. We then characterized the tournaments with h(T) = 4 and those with p(T) = 4. We also prove that for k ≥ 2, p_k(n) ≥ 2k+3. At last, we characterize the tournaments having exactly five pancyclic arcs. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 47: 87–110, 2004     

The spectrum for large sets of disjoint mendelsohn triple systems with any index

The spectrum for LMTS(v,1) has been obtained by Kang and Lei (Bulletin of the ICA, 1993). In this article, firstly, we give the spectrum for LMTS(v,3). Furthermore, by the existence of LMTS(v,1) and LMTS(v,3), the spectrum for LMTS(v,λ) is completed, that is v ≡ 2 (mod λ), v ≥ λ + 2, if λ ? 0(mod 3) then v ? 2 (mod 3) and if λ = 1 then v ≠ 6. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Existence of certain skew room frames with application to weakly 3-chromatic linear spaces

It is shown that for any even integer n ≥ 16 and for some b ≥ 1, there exists a skew Room frame of type 2^a 4^b with n = 2a + 4b. As an application, we show that for any integer v ≡ 1,4 (mod 12), there exists a weakly 3-chromatic linear space with all lines having size 4 iff v > 16. This answers an open problem posed by Colbourn and Rosa. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Simple and indecomposable twofold cyclic triple systems from Skolem sequences

We construct simple indecomposable twofold cyclic triple systems TS₂(v) for all v ≡ 0, 1, 3, 4, 7, and 9(mod 12), where v = 4 or v ≥ 12, using Skolem‐type sequences. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Combin Designs 8: 402–410, 2000     

On the 3BD‐closed set B3({4,5,6})

Let B₃(K) = {v:? an S(3,K,v)}. For K = {4} or {4,6}, B₃(K) has been determined by Hanani, and for K = {4, 5} by a previous paper of the author. In this paper, we investigate the case of K = {4,5,6}. It is easy to see that if v ∈ B₃ ({4, 5, 6}), then v ≡ 0, 1, 2 (mod 4). It is known that B₃{4, 6}) = {v > 0: v ≡ 0 (mod 2)} ? B₃({4,5,6}) by Hanani and that B₃({4, 5}) = {v > 0: v ≡ 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 10 (mod 12) and v ≠ 13} ? B₃({4, 5, 6}). We shall focus on the case of v ≡ 9 (mod 12). It is proved that B₃({4,5,6}) = {v > 0: v ≡ 0, 1, 2 (mod 4) and v ≠ 9, 13}. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.