An extension of building sets and relative difference sets

Building sets are a successful tool for constructing semi‐regular divisible difference sets and, in particular, semi‐regular relative difference sets. In this paper, we present an extension theorem for building sets under simple conditions. Some of the semi‐regular relative difference sets obtained using the extension theorem are new in the sense that their ambient groups have smaller ranks than previously known. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Combin Designs 8: 50–57, 2000