Hermitian varieties as codewords (Q1182422)

The author considers Hermitian varieties in the projective space \(PG(m- 1,q^ 2)\), \(q=p^ t\), \(p\) a prime, and shows that such a variety is a codeword in the code over \(GF(p)\) which can be constructed by viewing the projective geometry as a symmetric design whose points are the points of the projective space and whose blocks are the hyperplanes. The code is defined as the set of the characteristic functions of the blocks. The proof is algebraic and the needed material on generalized Reed Muller codes is given. Background and references are provided which allow the reader to see the links with related topics.