Linear cutting blocking sets and minimal codes in the rank metric (Q2169825)

Minimal codes in the Hamming metric recently gained a lot of attention due to their connections with secret sharing schemes. In the paper under review, the authors introduce and deeply study the rank-metric analog of minimal codes. A \textit{linear rank metric code} \(\mathcal{C}\) is a subspace of \(\mathbb{F}_{q^m}^n\) equipped with the rank distance, that is \[ d((x_1,\ldots,x_n),(y_1,\ldots,y_n))=\dim_{\mathbb{F}_q}(\langle x_1-y_1,\ldots,x_n-y_n \rangle_{\mathbb{F}_q}). \] A linear rank metric code \(\mathcal{C}\) is \textit{minimal} if for every \(c_1,c_2 \in \mathcal{C}\) such that \(\sigma^{\mathrm{rk}}(c_1)\subseteq \sigma^{\mathrm{rk}}(c_2)\) implies that \(c_1\) and \(c_2\) are \(\mathbb{F}_{q^m}\)-proportional, where \(\sigma^{\mathrm{rk}}\) denotes the support in the rank metric (cfr. Definition 2.2). Using the geometric correspondence between non-degenerate linear rank metric codes (that is linear rank metric codes that cannot be embedded in a smaller space preserving their metric properties) and the \(q\)-analog of systems, the authors characterize geometrically these codes as those associated with special type of linear blocking sets, called \textit{linear cutting blocking sets}. The geometric interpretation allows them to prove several bounds on the parameters and give some constructions. For instance, Corollary 5.10 states that if \(\mathcal{C}\) is a minimal linear rank metric code in \(\mathbb{F}_{q^m}^n\) of dimension \(k\geq 2\), then \(n\geq k+m-1\). Since to extend a minimal rank metric code preserves the property of being minimal, it is interesting to give constructions or bounds on the parameters of the smallest examples. The authors are able to prove also some existence results, such as Theorem 6.11 in which they show that there always exists a minimal linear rank metric code in \(\mathbb{F}_{q^m}^n\) of dimension \(k\geq 2\) with \(n=2k+m-2\). Explicit constructions of small linear cutting blocking sets (and hence of short minimal linear rank metric codes) are also given using the known examples of maximum scattered linear sets in the projective plane.