Linear representations of finite geometries and associated LDPC codes (Q2306010)

Low density parity check (LDPC) codes are codes where the parity check matrix has few non-zero entries. These codes have been shown to be extremely important in coding theory due to the fact that they can often have maximal and near maximal minimum weights. The incidence system of affine points and lines in a subset of a finite projective space is a linear representation. The rank of this incidence matrix is shown to have a direct geometric interpretation in terms of hyperplanes. The authors construct LDPC codes using both the incidence matrix and its transpose as parity check matrices. They prove a conjecture of Vandendriessche, that using the incidence matrix as the parity check matrix, the code is generated by vectors of minimum weight. Using the transpose as the parity check matrix, they compute the minimum weight in some cases and give explicit constructions of minimum weight vectors.