Kirkman covering designs with even-sized holes (Q1024451)

Let \(u\), \(g\), and \(k\) be positive integers with \(u \geq k\geq 3\). A holey covering design with equal-sized holes is defined to be a triple \(({\mathcal X}, {\mathcal G}, {\mathcal A})\), where \(\mathcal X\) is \(gu\)-set of points, \(\mathcal G\) is a collection of \(u\) disjoint \(g\)-subsets of \(\mathcal X\) (called holes or groups) which partition \(\mathcal X\), and \(\mathcal A\) is a collection of \(k\)-subsets of \(\mathcal X\) (called blocks), each meeting any hole in at most one point, such that every pair of points from distinct holes occurs in at least one block of \(\mathcal A\). An \(({\mathcal X}, {\mathcal G}, {\mathcal A})\) is referred to as a \(k\)-HCD of type \(g^u\). An HCD is called resolvable if its block set admits a partition into parallel classes, each parallel class being a partition of the point set \(\mathcal X\). A Kirkman HCD of type \(g^u\), simply denoted by KHCD\((g^u)\), is a resolvable 3-HCD of type \(g^u\). In order to make sense of resolvability for any parameters \(g\) and \(u\), we allow every parallel class to have one block of size \(\delta\), while all of its other blocks have size 3. If \(gu \equiv 0 \pmod{3}\), \(\delta=3\); if \(gu\equiv 2\pmod{3}\), \(\delta=2\); and if \(gu\equiv 1 \pmod{3}\), then \(\delta=4\). In this paper, the authors prove the existence of KHCD\((g^u)\) where \(g\) and \(u\) are positive integers, \(g\) is even and \(u\geq 6\) except when \((g,u)=(2,6)\) and possibly when \(g\equiv 10 \pmod{12}\) and \(u\equiv 2\pmod{3}\). Note that this leaves just one outstanding class to complete the spectrum for these designs.