One-factorisations of complete graphs arising from hyperbolae in the Desarguesian affine plane (Q669615)

Any complete graph \(K_{2n}\) on an even number of vertices admits a 1-factorization. Actually, the number of pairwise nonisomorphic 1-factorizations goes to infinity as \(n\) grows, see [\textit{C. C. Lindner} et al., J. Comb. Theory, Ser. B 20, 265--282 (1976; Zbl 0293.05156)]; actually, the growth of the number of these factorisations goes to infinity in an exponential way in \(n^2\). As such, it is of interest to determine among the possible factorisations of \(K_{2n}\) those for which some extra properties hold. \par The paper under review uses techniques from Galois geometry to construct and characterize some 1-factorizations of \(K_{q-1}\). \par The main interest of the paper lies in the geometry underlying the construction used to obtain such factorizations: the authors consider as vertices of the graph \(K_{q-1}\) the points of a hyperbola \(\mathcal H\) in the Desarguesian affine plane \(AG(2,q)\); they observe that a set \(F\) of \(n/2\) points external to \(\mathcal H\) such that no tangent to \(\mathcal H\) meets \(F\) in more than one point corresponds to a 1-factor of \(K_{q-1}\) and that \(n-1\) such sets define a 1-factorization if, and only if, they partition the set of all external points to \(\mathcal H\). Exploiting these properties, the authors are able to construct 1-factorizations of \(K_{q-1}\) for either \(q-1=2p\) with \(p>2\) a prime or \(q\equiv 1\pmod{4}\) and \(q-1=2^d\tau\) with \(\tau\in\{1,3\}\) a prime power and to characterize them in geometric terms.