A powerful method for constructing difference families and optimal optical orthogonal codes (Q1344522)

The author gives a powerful (but quite technical) generalization of R. M. Wilson's classical construction for difference families with \(\lambda= 1\) in (the additive groups of) Galois fields [``Cyclotomy and difference families in elementary abelian groups'', J. Number Theory 4, 17-42 (1972; Zbl 0259.05011)]. As applications, many new Steiner 2-designs \(S(2,k,v)\) are constructed; for instance, the only two cases for which the existence of an \(S(2,9,p)\), where \(p< 10^ 5\) is a prime, is still undecided, are \(p= 433\) and \(p= 1009\). The author also obtains several comparatively small examples of \(S(2,15,p)\), the smallest one having \(p= 13441\) (Wilson's smallest example had \(p= 76231\)). In fact, the author's results apply to the more general notion of optical orthogonal codes with \(\lambda= 1\) (where group elements are supposed to appear as differences at most once); a slightly different version of his main result for difference families was already given by \textit{M. Greig} [``Some balanced incomplete block design constructions'', Cong. Numerantium 77, 121-134 (1990)].