A combinatorial problem for vector spaces over finite fields (Q1185082)

Let \(V\) be a vector space over an arbitrary field of finite dimension \(m\geq 1\) and let \(s\) and \(m_ 1,m_ 2,\ldots,m_ s\) be positive integers. For a system \(C\) of vectors of the form \(c_ j^{(i)}\in V\), for \(1\leq j\leq m_ i\), \(1\leq i\leq s\) define \(\rho(C)=\min\sum^ s_{i=1}d_ i\) where the minimum is extended over all integers \(d_ 1,\ldots,d_ s\) with \(0\leq d_ i\leq m_ i\) for \(1\leq i\leq s\) and \(\sum^ s_{i=1}d_ i\geq 1\) for which the subsystem \(\{c_ j^{(i)}:1\leq j\leq d_ i\), \(1\leq i\leq s\}\) is linearly dependent in \(V\). If there are no such \(d_ 1,\ldots,d_ s\) then define \(\rho(C)=m+1\). This paper studies the number \(R(V;m_ 1,\ldots,m_ s)=\max\rho(C)\) where the maximum is taken over all systems \(C\) of the noted form. It was previously shown that if the field of scalars is infinite then \(R(V;m_ 1,\ldots,m_ s)=m+1\) and it thus suffices to consider \(V\) over a finite field. The relationship of this problem with coding theory is also considered.