Nuclei and automorphism groups of generalized twisted Gabidulin codes (Q2419057)

Let \(\mathbb{K}\) be a field. The set \(\mathbb{K}^{m\times n}\) of all \(m \times n\) matrices over \(\mathbb{K}\) is a \(\mathbb{K}\)-vector space. It is possible to equip \(\mathbb{K}^{m\times n}\) with a distance (called rank-metric distance) given by \(d(A,B)=\operatorname{rk}(A-B)\) for any \(A,B \in \mathbb{K}^{m\times n}\), where \(\operatorname{rk}\) denotes the rank of a matrix. The minimum distance of a subset \(\mathcal{C}\) of \(\mathbb{K}^{m\times n}\) (a rank metric code) is the minimum of the distances \(d(A,B)\), for any \(A\neq B\in \mathbb{K}^{m\times n}\). Two rank metric codes \(\mathcal{C}_1\) and \(\mathcal{C}_2\) contained in \(\mathbb{K}^{m\times n}\) are equivalent if there exist \(A\in \mathrm{GL}(m,\mathbb{K})\), \(B\in \mathrm{GL}(n,\mathbb{K})\), \(C\in \mathbb{K}^{n\times m}\), \(\gamma \in \Aut(\mathbb{K})\) such that \[ \mathcal{C}_2=\{AX^{\gamma}B+C : X \in \mathcal{C}_1\}. \] All the equivalence mappings of a rank metric code \(\mathcal{C}\) to itself form its automorphism group \(\Aut(\mathcal{C})\). For MRD codes with minimum distance less than \(\min\{m, n\}\), there are a few known constructions. The most famous are the Gabidulin [\textit{É. M. Gabidulin}, Probl. Inf. Transm. 21, 1--12 (1985; Zbl 0585.94013); \textit{P. Delsarte}, J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 25, 226--241 (1978; Zbl 0397.94012)] and the generalized Gabidulin ones, which have been recently generalized to the so called twisted Gabidulin codes and generalized twisted Gabidulin codes [\textit{J. Sheekey}, Adv. Math. Commun. 10, No. 3, 475--488 (2016; Zbl 1348.94087)]. These are particular examples of \(\mathbb{K}\)-linear rank metric codes. When \(m = n\), the automorphism groups and the equivalence issue for the generalized twisted Gabidulin codes have been completely solved [\textit{G. Lunardon} et al., J. Algebr. Comb. 46, No. 2, 313--340 (2017; Zbl 1392.94953)]. In this article, the authors investigate the middle nucleus as well as the right nucleus of a subclass of generalized twisted Gabidulin codes with \(m < n\). Under certain assumptions on the involved parameters, they determine these nuclei (see Theorem 3.8 and Theorem 3.9). Finally, by exploiting these results they derive necessary conditions on the automorphisms of generalized twisted Gabidulin codes under certain restrictions for the involved parameters (see Theorem 4.2).