Heden's bound on the tail of a vector space partition (Q1800417): Difference between revisions

Let \(\mathbb{F}_q\) be the finite field with \(q\) elements. For a fixed positive integer \(v\), let \(\mathbb{F}_q^v\) denote the \(v\)-dimensional numerical vector space over \(\mathbb{F}_q\). A vector space partition \(\mathcal{P}\) of \(\mathbb{F}_q^v\) is a collection of subspaces of \(\mathbb{F}_q^v\) such that every non-zero vector is contained in a unique element of \(\mathcal{P}\). If \(k\) divides \(v\) then \(k\)-spreads exist, that is a space partition in which all the spaces have the same dimension \(k\). If \(k\) does not divide \(v\) then no \(k\)-spread exists and only partial \(k\)-spreads can be constructed. Heden's results concern the so called \textit{tail} and \textit{length of the tail} of the vector space partition \(\mathcal{P}\), that is the dimension \(d_1\) of the smallest subspace in \(\mathcal{P}\) and the number of subspaces of such dimension. In this work, the author strengthens Heden's bound by studying the properties of the set \(\mathcal{N}\) of \(d_1\)-subspaces of a vector space partition \(\mathcal{P}\). A key result is that, for a given hyperplane \(H\), the number of subspaces of \(\mathcal{N}\) contained in \(H\) is congruent to \(\#\mathcal{N}\) \(\pmod{q^{d_2-d_1}}\), where \(d_2\) is the second smallest dimension of a subspace in \(\mathcal{P}\). The main result is the following. {Theorem.} For a non-empty \(q^r\)-divisible set \(\mathcal{N}\) of \(k\)-subspaces in \(\mathbb{F}_q^v\) the following bounds on \(n = \#\mathcal{N}\) are tight. {\parindent=6mm \begin{itemize}\item[(i)] We have \(n \geq q^{k}+1\) and if \(r \geq k\) then either \(k\) divides \(r\) and \(n \geq \frac{q^{k+r}-1}{q^k-1}\) or \(n\geq \frac{q^{(a+2)k}-1}{q^k-1}\), where \(r = ak+b\) with \(0 < b < k\) and \(a, b \in \mathbb{N}\). \item[(ii)] Let \(q^r\) divide \(n\). If \(r < k\) then \(n \geq q^{k+r} - q^k + q^r\) and \(n \geq q^{k+r}\) otherwise. \end{itemize}}