Partitionable starters for twin prime power type (Q2641308)

Let G be an additive Abelian group of odd order n and \(G^*\) the set of its nonzero elements. A starter of G is a partition of \(G^*\) into (n- 1)/2 pairs \((x_ i,y_ i)\), \(1\leq i\leq (n-1)/2\), such that \(G^*=\{\pm (x_ i-y_ i):\) \(1\leq i\leq ((n-1)/2\}\). This starter is strong if \(x_ i+y_ i\), \(1\leq i\leq (n-1)/2\) are different, is skew if \(G^*=\{\pm (x_ i+y_ i):\) \(1\leq i\leq (n-1)/2\}\), is balanced if \((x_ 1,...,x_{(n-1)/2})\) and \((y_ 1,...,y_{(n-1)/2})\) form a supplementary difference set, that is, every element of \(G^*\) appears equally often in the differences \(x_ i-x_ j\) and \(y_ i-y_ j\) for \(1\leq i,j\leq (n-1)/2\), and is partitionable if it can be divided into halves \(S_ 1\) and \(S_ 2\) such that (a) if \(n=4k+3\), then \(| S_ 1| +1=| S_ 2|\) and \(\{\) \(0\}\cup \{x:\) x is in a pair of \(S_ 1\}\) and \(\{\) x: x is in a pair of \(S_ 2\}\) are supplementary difference sets, (b) if \(n=4k+1\), then \(| S_ 1| =| S_ 2|\) and \(\{\) x: x is in a pair of \(S_ 1\}\) and \(\{\) x: x is in a pair of \(S_ 2\}\) are supplementary difference sets. The concept of partitionable starter was introduced by Du and Hwang for establishing a multiplication theorem of balanced Howell rotations. They showed that partitionable starters exist for (i) \(n=3k+1\) a prime power and (ii) \(n=4k+3\) a prime power and -2 a generator of GF(n). In this paper, the authors construct partitionable starters for \(n=PQ\) where P and Q are twin prime powers, i.e., they are prime powers satisfying \(P+2=Q\). In addition, they show that these partitionable starters are skew for \(n\geq 143\) and partitionable starters exist for \(n=2^ m-1\).