Cyclic orbit flag codes (Q2232124)

Flag codes are a generalization of constant dimension subspace codes, and they have application in multishot network coding. A degree \(n\) extension of finite fields is considered, namely \(\mathbb F_{q^n}/\mathbb F_{q}\). A flag \(\mathcal F=(\mathcal F_1,\ldots,\mathcal F_r)\) is a sequence of nested \(\mathbb F_{q}\)-subspaces \[\{0\}\subsetneq \mathcal F_1 \subsetneq \ldots \subsetneq \mathcal F_r \subsetneq \mathbb F_{q^n}, \] whose type is \((\dim_{\mathbb F_{q}}(\mathcal F_1),\ldots,\dim_{\mathbb F_{q}}(\mathcal F_r))\). For two flags of the same type \((t_1,\ldots,t_r)\), the flag distance is \[d_f(\mathcal F, \mathcal F')=2\Big(\sum_{i=1}^rt_i-\dim_{\mathbb F_{q}}(\mathcal F_i\cap \mathcal F_i') \Big).\] Finally, a flag code is a set of flags of the same type endowed with the flag distance. In this paper, the authors study cyclic orbit flag codes. These are sets of flags corresponding to orbits of the action of subgroups of \(\mathbb F_{q^n}^*\) on the set of all the flags of a given type. They analyze the notions of stabilizer subfield and best friends of a flag and use them for studying two special classes of flag codes: Galois cyclic flag codes, that are cyclic orbit codes generated by a sequence of nested subfields and optimum distance cyclic orbit flag codes, i.e. cyclic orbit flag codes attaining the best possible minimum distance. The paper is very well-written and clear. The proofs are correct and understandable and the techniques used are mainly based on linear algebra, finite fields and group theory.