Bruen chains in PG\((3,p^k)\), \(k\geq 2\) (Q1972149)

A Bruen chain is a set \(C=\{ R_1, R_2, \ldots, R_n\}\) of reguli of a regular spread \(S\) of \(\text{PG}(3, q)\), with \(q\) a power of a prime, satisfying the following three conditions: (i) \(|R_i \cap R_j |= 2\) for any two reguli \(R_i\) and \(R_j\) of \(C\); (ii) \(R_i\cap R_j\cap R_k = \emptyset\) for any three reguli \(R_i\), \(R_j\) and \(R_k\) of \(C\); (iii) Any line \(l\) of \(S\) is contained in either none of the reguli of \(C\) or in exactly two of the reguli. Bruen chains were already found in the case \(q = 5\), 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 31 and 37 by the first author [Discrete Math. 146, 69-96 (1995; Zbl 0840.51002) and ibid. 188, 267-267 (1998)]. In the paper under review, the authors describe a backtracking algorithm to perform a search for Bruen chains in \(\text{PG}(3, p^k)\), with \(k\geq 2\) and \(p\) a prime. For \(q = 9\) and 25, they found, in both cases, two non-equivalent chains. For \(q = 27\), they found exactly one chain. For \(q = 49\), they found no chain yet.