On the size of a maximal partial spread (Q1261004)

A maximal partial spread \({\mathcal S}\) of \(PG(3,q)\) is a set of disjoint lines of \(PG(3,q)\) such that no other line is disjoint from every element of \({\mathcal S}\). A set of lines covering all points but the points of a Baer subspace is such a partial spread. The paper under review shows that this type of maximal partial spreads cannot exist unless \(q=4\) (and these are classified by \textit{E. R. Van Dam} [Des. Codes Cryptography 3, 193-198 (1993)]). Moreover it is shown that, in the general case and for \(q>2\), a maximal partial spread is either a spread (i.e. it covers all points of \(PG(3,q))\) or contains at most \(q^ 2+1-\sqrt{2q}\) lines. In fact the first result follows from the second, but the authors give a much shorter separate proof of the first result. Along the way, a similar result for \(AG(3,q)\) is proved, i.e. there is no partial spread of \(AG(3,q)\) covering all points but the points of a Baer subspace.