On t‐designs and s‐resolvable t‐designs from hyperovals

Hyperovals in projective planes turn out to have a link with t‐designs. Motivated by an unpublished work of Lonz and Vanstone, we present a construction for t‐designs and s‐resolvable t‐designs from hyperovals in projective planes of order $2^n$. We prove that the construction works for $t\le 5$. In particular, for $t=5$ the construction yields a family of 5‐ $\left(2^n+2,8,70\left(2^{n?2}?1\right)\right)$ designs. For $t=4$ numerous infinite families of 4‐designs on $2^n+2$ points with block size $2k$ can be constructed for any $k\ge 4$. The construction assumes the existence of a 4‐ $\left(2^{n?1}+1,k,\lambda \right)$ design, called the indexing design, including the complete 4‐ $\left(2^{n?1}+1,k,\left(\genfrac{}{}{0ex}{}{2^{n?1}?3}{k?4}\right)\right)$ design. Moreover, we prove that if the indexing design is s‐resolvable, then so is the constructed design. As a result, many of the constructed designs are s‐resolvable for $s=2,3$. We include a short discussion on the simplicity or non‐simplicity of the designs from hyperovals.