Extremal sizes of subspace partitions

A subspace partition Π of V?= V(n, q) is a collection of subspaces of V such that each 1-dimensional subspace of V is in exactly one subspace of Π. The size of Π is the number of its subspaces. Let σ _q (n, t) denote the minimum size of a subspace partition of V in which the largest subspace has dimension t, and let ρ _q (n, t) denote the maximum size of a subspace partition of V in which the smallest subspace has dimension t. In this article, we determine the values of σ _q (n, t) and ρ _q (n, t) for all positive integers n and t. Furthermore, we prove that if n ≥?2t, then the minimum size of a maximal partial t-spread in V(n +?t ?1, q) is σ _q (n, t).