On 2-(45, 12, 3) designs

Under the assumption that the incidence matrix of a 2-(45, 12, 3) design has a certain block structure, we determine completely the number of nonisomorphic designs involved. We discover 1136 such designs with trivial automorphism group. In addition we analyze all 2-(45, 12, 3) designs having an automorphism of order 5 or 11. Altogether, the total number of nonisomorphic 2-(45, 12, 3) designs found in 3752. Many of these designs are self-dual and each of these self-dual designs possess a polarity. Some have polarities with no absolute points, giving rise to strongly regular (45, 12, 3, 3) graphs. In total we discovered 58 pairwise nonisomorphic strongly regular graphs, one of which has a trivial automorphism group. Further, we analyzed completely all the designs for subdesigns with parameters 2-(12, 4, 3), 2-(9, 3, 3), and 2-(5, 4, 3). In the first case, the number of 2-(12, 4, 3) subdesigns that a design possessed, if non-zero, turned out to be a multiple of 3, whereas 2-(9, 3, 3) subdesigns were so abundant it was more unusual to find a design without them. Finally, in the case of 2-(5, 4, 3) subdesigns there is a design, unique amongst the ones discovered, that has precisely 9 such subdesigns and these form a partition of the point set of the design. This design has a transitive group of automorphisms of order 360. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Some new symmetric designs

For q, an odd prime power, we construct symmetric (2q²+2q+1,q²,½q(q-1)) designs having an automorphism group of order q that fixes 2q+1 points. The construction indicates that for each q the number of such designs that are pairwise non-isomorphic is very large.     

Classification of Hadamard matrices of order 44 with automorphisms of order 7

The Hadamard matrices of order 44 possessing automorphisms of order 7 are classified. The number of their equivalence classes is 384. The order of their full automorphism group is calculated. These Hadamard matrices yield 1683 nonisomorphic 3-(44,22,10) designs, 57932 nonisomorphic 2-(43,21,10) designs, and two inequivalent extremal binary self-dual doubly even codes of length 88 (one of them being new).     

Some Hadamard designs with parameters (71,35,17)

Up to isomorphisms there are precisely eight symmetric designs with parameters (71, 35, 17) admitting a faithful action of a Frobenius group of order 21 in such a way that an element of order 3 fixes precisely 11 points. Five of these designs have 84 and three have 420 as the order of the full automorphism group G. If |G| = 420, then the structure of G is unique and we have G = (Frob₂₁ × Z5):Z4. In this case Z(G) = 〈1〉, G′ has order 35, and G induces an automorphism group of order 6 of Z7. If |G| = 84, then Z(G) is of order 2, and in precisely one case a Sylow 2‐subgroup is elementary abelian. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 10: 144–149, 2002; DOI 10.1002/jcd.996     

The classification of spreads in PG(3, q) admitting linear groups of order q(q+1), I. odd order

A classification is given of all spreads in PG(3, q), q = p^r, p odd, whose associated translation planes admit linear collineation groups of order q(q +1) such that a Sylow p-subgroup fixes a line and acts non-trivially on it.The authors are indebted to T. Penttila for pointing out the special examples of conical flock translation planes of order q² that admit groups of order q(q+1), when q = 23 or 47.     

Resolutions of PG(5, 2) with point‐cyclic automorphism group

A t‐(υ, k, λ) design is a set of υ points together with a collection of its k‐subsets called blocks so that all subsets of t points are contained in exactly λ blocks. The d‐dimensional projective geometry over GF(q), PG(d, q), is a 2‐(q^d + q^d−1 + … + q + 1, q + 1, 1) design when we take its points as the points of the design and its lines as the blocks of the design. A 2‐(υ, k, 1) design is said to be resolvable if the blocks can be partitioned as ℛ = {R₁, R₂, …, R_s}, where s = (υ − 1)/(k−1) and each R_i consists of υ/k disjoint blocks. If a resolvable design has an automorphism σ which acts as a cycle of length υ on the points and ℛ^σ = ℛ, then the design is said to be point‐cyclically resolvable. The design associated with PG(5, 2) is known to be resolvable and in this paper, it is shown to be point‐cyclically resolvable by enumerating all inequivalent resolutions which are invariant under a cyclic automorphism group G = 〈σ〉 where σ is a cycle of length 63. These resolutions are the only resolutions which admit a point‐transitive automorphism group. Furthermore, some necessary conditions for the point‐cyclic resolvability of 2‐(υ, k, 1) designs are also given. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Combin Designs 8: 2–14, 2000     

Quasi-symmetric 2-(31, 7, 7) designs and a revision of Hamada's conjecture

It is proved by use of the classification of the doubly even (32, 16) codes, that in addition to the design formed by the planes in PG(4, 2), there are exactly four other nonisomorphic quasi-symmetric 2-(31, 7, 7) designs, and they all have 2-rank 16. This shows that the “only if” part of the following conjecture due to Hamada, is not true in general: “If N(D) is an incidence matrix of a design D with the parameters of a design G defined by the flats of a given dimension in PG(t, q) or AG(t, q), then rank_q N(D) ⩾ rank_q N(G), with equality if and only if D is isomorphic with G.” The five quasi-symmetric 2-(31, 7, 7) designs are extendable to nonisomorphic 3-(32, 8, 7) designs having 2-rank 16, one of which is formed by the 3-flats in AG(5, 2), thus the designs arising from a finite affine geometry also are not characterized by their ranks in general. A quasi-symmetric 2-(45, 9, 8) design yielding a pseudo-geometric strongly regular graph with parameters (r, k, t) = (15, 10, 6) is also constructed on the base of the known extremal doubly even (48, 24) code.     

On translation planes of orderq 3 that admit a collineation group of orderq 3

Let II be a translation plane of orderq ³, with kernel GF(q) forq a prime power, that admits a collineation groupG of orderq ³ in the linear translation complement. Moreover, assume thatG fixes a point at infinity, acts transitively on the remaining points at infinity andG/E is an abelian group of orderq ², whereE is the elation group ofG.In this article, we determined all such translation planes. They are (i) elusive planes of type I or II or (ii) desirable planes.Furthermore, we completely determined the translation planes of orderp ³, forp a prime, admitting a collineation groupG of orderp ³ in the translation complement such thatG fixes a point at infinity and acts transitively on the remaining points at infinity. They are (i) semifield planes of orderp ³ or (ii) the Sherk plane of order 27.     

On symmetric nets and generalized Hadamard matrices from affine designs

Symmetric nets are affine resolvable designs whose duals are also affine. It is shown that. up to isomorphism, there are exactly four symmetric (3, 3)-nets (v=b=27,k=9), and exactly two inequivalent 9×9 generalized Hadamard matrices over the group of order 3. The symmetric (3, 3)-nets are found as subnets of affine resolvable 2-(27, 9, 4) designs. Ten of the 68 non-isomorphic affine resolvable 2-(27, 9, 4) designs are not extensions of symmetric (3, 3)-subnets, providing the first examples of affine 2-(q³, q², q²–1/q–1) designs without symmetric (q, q)-subnets.     

Extremal Self-Dual [50, 25, 10] Codes with Automorphisms of Order 3 and Quasi-Symmetric 2-(49, 9,6) Designs

Five non-isomorphic quasi-symmetric 2-(49, 9, 6) designs are known. They arise from extremal self-dual [50, 25, 10] codes with a certain weight enumerator. Four of them have an automorphism of order 3 fixing two points. In this paper, it is shown that there are exactly 48 inequivalent extremal self-dual [50, 25, 10] code with this weight enumerator and an automorphism of order 3 fixing two points. 44 new quasi-symmetric 2-(49, 9, 6) designs with an automorphism of order 3 are constructed from these codes.     

Point regular groups of automorphisms of generalised quadrangles

We study the point regular groups of automorphisms of some of the known generalised quadrangles. In particular we determine all point regular groups of automorphisms of the thick classical generalised quadrangles. We also construct point regular groups of automorphisms of the generalised quadrangle of order (q−1,q+1) obtained by Payne derivation from the classical symplectic quadrangle W(3,q). For q=pf with f?2 we obtain at least two nonisomorphic groups when p?5 and at least three nonisomorphic groups when p=2 or 3. Our groups include nonabelian 2-groups, groups of exponent 9 and nonspecial p-groups. We also enumerate all point regular groups of automorphisms of some small generalised quadrangles.     

Edge-coloured designs with block size four

Summary The existence of edge-coloured block designs with block size four is studied for all nonisomorphic colourings of the edges of aK ₄. There are 25 nonisomorphic edge-colouredK ₄'s; for each, we examine the existence of edge-coloured designs with the minimum possible index. Uniform cases lead to block designs, perpendicular arrays, nested Steiner triple systems, idempotent Schroeder quasigroups, and other combinatorial objects.     

MDS Self-Dual Codes over Large Prime Fields

Combinatorial designs have been used widely in the construction of self-dual codes. Recently a new method of constructing self-dual codes was established using orthogonal designs. This method has led to the construction of many new self-dual codes over small finite fields and rings. In this paper, we generalize this method by using generalized orthogonal designs, and we give another new method that creates and solves Diophantine equations over GF(p) in order to find suitable generator matrices for self-dual codes. We show that under the necessary conditions these methods can be applied as well to small and large fields. We apply these two methods to study self-dual codes over GF(31) and GF(37). Using these methods we obtain some new maximum distance separable self-dual codes of small orders.     

On the Automorphisms of Order 2 with Fixed Points for the Extremal Self-Dual Codes of Length 24"m

It is shown that an extremal self-dual code of length 24">m may have an automorphism of order 2 with fixed points only for ">m = 1,3, or 5. We prove that no self-dual [72, 36, 16] code has such an automorphism in its automorphism group.     

On the classification of linear spaces of order 11

A linear space of order n is a pair (V,B), where V is a finite set of n elements and B is a set of subsets of V such that each 2-subset of V is contained in exactly one element of B. The exact number of nonisomorphic linear spaces was known up to order 10. Betten and Braun [1] found that there exist at least 232,923 nonisomorphic linear spaces of order 11. We used a generalization of Ivanov's algorithm for the enumeration of block designs in order to construct all 232,929 linear spaces of order 11. The method used will be described and some data concerning line types, line lengths, and orders of automorphism groups is listed. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Further progress on difference families with block size 4 or 5

A strong indication about the existence of a (7p, 4, 1) difference family with p ≡ 7 (mod 12) a prime has been given in [11]. Here, developing some ideas of that paper, we give, much more generally, a strong indication about the existence of a cyclic (pq, 4, 1) difference family whenever p and q are primes congruent to 7 (mod 12) and of a cyclic (pq, 5, 1) difference family whenever p and q are primes congruent to 11 (mod 20). Indeed we give an algorithm for their construction that seems to be always successful and we have checked it works whenever both primes p and q do not exceed 1,000. All our (pq, 4, 1) and (pq, 5, 1) difference families have the nice property of admitting a multiplier of order 3 or 5, respectively, that fixes almost all base blocks. As an intermediate result we also find an optimal (p, 5, 1) optical orthogonal code for every prime p ≡ 11 (mod 20) not exceeding 10,000.     

Notes on binary codes related to the O(5, q) generalized quadrangle for odd q

In this note we determine the dimensions of the binary codes spanned by the lines or by the point neighborhoods in the generalized quadrangle Sp(4, q) and its dual O(5, q), where q is odd. Several more general results are given. As a side result we find that if a square generalized quadrangle of odd order has an antiregular point, then all of its points are antiregular.On leave from the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta; research supported by a grant from NWO.     

Automorphisms and Isomorphisms of Symmetric and Affine Designs

Given a finite group G, for all sufficiently large d and for each q > 3 there are symmetric designs and affine designs having the same parameters as PG(d, q) and AG(d, q), respectively, and having full automorphism group isomorphic to G.     

The classification of self-dual modular codes

A classification method of self-dual codes over Zm is given. If m=rs with relatively prime integers r and s, then the classification can be accomplished by double coset decompositions of Sn by automorphism groups of self-dual codes over Zr and Zs. We classify self-dual codes of length 4 over Zp for all primes p in terms of their automorphism groups and then apply our method to classify self-dual codes over Zm for arbitrary integer m. Self-dual codes of length 8 are also classified over Zpq for p,q=2,3,5,7.