Construction of \((16,6)\) configurations from a group of order 16 (Q1320214)

An abstract (16,6) configuration is a \(16 \times 16\) matrix with 6 ones in each row or column and zeroes elsewhere. This matrices are studied in connection with the theory of Kummer surfaces \(S\), for the 16 nodes of \(S\) and the 16 planes corresponding to the nodes of the Kummer surface dual to \(S\) form a configuration in \(\mathbb{P}^ 3\) whose incidence matrix is precisely an abstract (16,6) configuration and all the nondegenerate (16,6) configurations arise from Kummer surfaces. The author shows here how one can construct abstract (16,6) configurations starting with a group \(F\) of order 16 and 6 distinguished elements of \(F\). For all these groups \(F\), the author describes the resulting configurations; it turns out that they are all nondegenerate, except when \(F=Q^ 2_ 8\), where \(Q_ 8\) is the quaternion group of order 8. In the other cases, the group \(F\) has a geometrical interpretation as a subgroup of the group of automorphism of the desingularization of the associated Kummer surfaces.