Elations and homologies in collineation groups of finite projective planes

Let G be a collineation group of a finite projective plane. The action of G on the centers and axes of non-identity elations and homologies is discussed. There are several results on the possible numbers of orbits of centers, axes, and center-axis pairs of homologies and elations of a particular order. Several results on the generation of homologies or elations by other homologies or elations reveal additional information on the structures formed by the centers and axes. Some sets of sufficient conditions for the centers and axes to form Desarguesian subplanes are given.     

A characterization of projective subspaces of codimension two as quasi-symmetric designs with good blocks

Consider an incidence structure whose points are the points of a PG_n(n+2,q) and whose block are the subspaces of codimension two, where n?2. Since every two subspaces of codimension two intersect in a subspace of codimension three or codimension four, it is easily seen that this incidence structure is a quasi-symmetric design. The aim of this paper is to prove a characterization of such designs (that are constructed using projective geometries) among the class of all the quasi-symmetric designs with correct parameters and with every block a good block. The paper also improves an earlier result for the special case of n=2 and obtains a Dembowski-Wagner-type result for the class of all such quasi-symmetric designs.     

Ovals in projective designs

The notion of “oval” arose in the study of finite projective planes. We extend the notion to arbitrary projective designs — indeed to arbitrary designs. Most of the elementary facts admit of direct generalization and ovals appear to abound in nonclassical projective designs.     

On tight projective designs

It is shown that among all tight designs in , where is or , or (quaternions), only 5-designs in (Lyubich, Shatalora Geom Dedicata 86: 169–178, 2001) have irrational angle set. This is the only case of equal ranks of the first and the last irreducible idempotent in the corresponding Bose-Mesner algebra.      

Blockades and baer subspaces in finite projective spaces

Let P=PG(2t + 1, q) denote the projective space of order q and of dimension 2t+13. A set of lines of P is called a blockade if it fulfills the following two conditions.

Quasi-affine symmetric designs

A symmetric design with parameters v = q ²(q + 2), k = q(q + 1), λ = q, q ≥ 2, is called a quasi-affine design if its point set can be partitioned into q + 2 subsets P ₀, P ₁,..., P _q , P _q+1 such that the induced structure in every point neighborhood is an affine plane of order q (repeated q times). A quasi-affine design with q ≥ 3 determines its point neighborhoods uniquely and dual of such a design is also a quasi-affine design. These structural properties pave way for definition of a strongly quasi-affine design and it is also shown that associated with every quasi-affine design is a unique strongly quasi-affine design from which the given quasi-affine design is obtained by certain unique cutting and pasting operation. This investigation also enables us to associate a unique 2-regular graph with q + 2 vertices and in turn, a unique colored partition of the integer q + 2. These combinatorial consequences are finally used to obtain an exponential lower bound on the number of non-isomorphic solutions of such symmetric designs improving the earlier lower bound of 2. Work of Sanjeevani Gharge is supported by Faculty Improvement Programme of U.G.C., India.     

Distorting symmetric designs

A simple replacement approach is used to construct new symmetric and affine designs from projective or affine spaces. This is used to construct symmetric designs with a given automorphism group, to study GMW designs, and to construct new affine designs whose automorphism group fixes a point and has just two point- and block-orbits.      

Decomposable symmetric designs

The first infinite families of symmetric designs were obtained from finite projective geometries, Hadamard matrices, and difference sets. In this paper we describe two general methods of constructing symmetric designs that give rise to the parameters of all other known infinite families of symmetric designs. The method of global decomposition produces an incidence matrix of a symmetric design as a block matrix with each block being a zero matrix or an incidence matrix of a smaller symmetric design. The method of local decomposition represents incidence matrices of a residual and a derived design of a symmetric design as block matrices with each block being a zero matrix or an incidence matrix of a smaller residual or derived design, respectively.     

Extending symmetric designs

If a symmetric 2-design with parameters (v, k, λ) is extendable, then one of the following holds: v = 4λ + 3, k = 2λ + 1; or v = (λ + 2)(λ² + 4λ + 2), k = λ² + 3λ + 1; or v = 111, k = 11, λ = 1; or v = 495, k = 39, λ = 3. In particular, there are at most three sets of extendable symmetric design parameters with any given value of λ. As a consequence, the only twice-extendable symmetric design is the 21-point projective plane.     

On rank 3 projective designs

The finite projective designs with rank 3 collineation groupsG such thatG _p =G _l for some point-block pair (P, l) are divided into 4 classes. 2 of these classes are formed by the Paley designs and the designs complementary to the Paley designs. For the other 2 classes restrictions on the parameters are obtained. In particular it is shown that the only such design having =1 is the projective plane of order 2.With 2 Figures     

Bounds for codes and designs in complex subspaces

We introduce the concepts of complex Grassmannian codes and designs. Let $\mathcal{G}_{m,n}$ denote the set of m-dimensional subspaces of ? ⁿ : then a code is a finite subset of $\mathcal{G}_{m,n}$ in which few distances occur, while a design is a finite subset of $\mathcal{G}_{m,n}$ that polynomially approximates the entire set. Using Delsarte’s linear programming techniques, we find upper bounds for the size of a code and lower bounds for the size of a design, and we show that association schemes can occur when the bounds are tight. These results are motivated by the bounds for real subspaces recently found by Bachoc, Bannai, Coulangeon and Nebe, and the bounds generalize those of Delsarte, Goethals and Seidel for codes and designs on the complex unit sphere.     

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.     

Imprimitive flag-transitive symmetric designs

A recent paper of O'Reilly Regueiro obtained an explicit upper bound on the number of points of a flag-transitive, point-imprimitive, symmetric design in terms of the number of blocks containing two points. We improve that upper bound and give a complete list of feasible parameter sequences for such designs for which two points lie in at most ten blocks. Classifications are available for some of these parameter sequences.