On the number of \(q\)-ary quasi-perfect codes with covering radius 2 (Q2161415)

Let \(q\) be a prime power, and let \((n, M, d ; \rho)_{q}\) be a \(q\)-ary code of length \(n\), size \(M\), minimum distance \(d\), and covering radius \(\rho\). In this paper, the author use the switching construction to construct a family of \(q\)-ary nonlinear quasi-perfect codes with covering radius \(\rho=2\), and a lower bound of the number of such codes was given. More precisely, Let \(RM_{q}((q-1)m-2, m)\) be the generalized Reed-Muller code of order \((q-1)m-2\) over the field \(\mathbb{F}_q\), and let \(\mathscr{R}_{i}\) be a subspace spanned by the set of all triples of \(RM_{q}((q-1) m-2, m)\) having 1 in the \(i\)th coordinate, with \(i \in\{1, \ldots, n\}\). Let \(q \geq 3, m \geq 2\), and \(n=q^{m}\). Theorem 1 says that, let \(\mathscr{R}_{i}+\mathbf{x} \subset R M_{q}((q-1) m-2, m)\), then \[ \mathscr{C}^{\prime}=\left(R M_{q}((q-1) m-2, m) \backslash\left(\mathscr{R}_{i}+\mathbf{x}\right)\right) \cup\left(\mathscr{R}_{i}+\mathbf{x}+\lambda \mathbf{e}_{i}\right) \] is a \(q\)-ary nonlinear quasi-perfect code with parameters \(\left(n, q^{n-m-1}, 3; 2\right)_{q}\), for any \(\lambda \in\) \(\mathbb{F}_{q} \backslash\{0\}\) and for any \(i \in\{1,2, \ldots, n\}\). Theorem 2 says that, let \(\mathscr{R}_{i}+\mathbf{x}_{t} \subset R M_{q}((q-1) m-2, m)\), \(1 \leq t \leq q^{[m]_{q}-m},\left(\mathscr{R}_{i}+\mathbf{x}_{t_{1}}\right) \cap\left(\mathscr{R}_{i}+\mathbf{x}_{t_{2}}\right)=\emptyset\) for all \(1 \leq t_{1} \leq q^{[m]_{q}-m}, 1 \leq t_{2} \leq q^{[m]_{q}-m}\), \(t_{1} \neq t_{2}\), then \[ \mathscr{C}^{\prime}=\bigcup_{t=1}^{q^{[m] q-m}}\left(\mathscr{R}_{i}+\mathbf{x}_{t}+\lambda_{t} \mathbf{e}_{i}\right) \] is a \(q\)-ary quasi-perfect code with parameters \(\left(n, q^{n-m-1}, 3; 2\right)_{q}, \lambda_{t} \in \mathbb{F}_{q}, i \in\) \(\{1,2, \ldots, n\}\). Theorem 3 says that there are more than \(q^{q^{[m] q-m}-n(m+2)}\) nonequivalent such \(q\)-ary quasi-perfect codes with parameters \(\left(n, q^{n-m-1}, 3; 2\right)_{q}\) Finally, we note that before this paper, in [\textit{A. M. Romanov}, Probl. Inf. Transm. 57, No. 3, 199--211 (2021; Zbl 1495.94117); translation from Probl. Peredachi Inf. 57, No. 3, 3--16 (2021)], by using the concatenation construction, a family of \(q\)-ary even quasi-perfect codes with covering radius \(\rho=2\) was constructed.