Designs and partial geometries over finite fields

Let be a finite field, and let (, B) be a nontrivial 2-(n, k, 1)-design over . Then each point induces a (k–1)-spread S on /. (, B) is said to be a geometric design if S is a geometric spread on / for each . In this paper, we prove that there are no geometric designs over any finite field .Research partially supported by NSF grant DMS-8703229.