Hyperfocused arcs (Q2471459)

An arc in a projective plane whose secants meet some exterior line in the minimum number of points is said to be hyperfocused on that line. Such arcs are related to geometrically based secret sharing schemes. A \(k\)-arc \(\mathcal{K}\) is sharply focused on a line \(\ell\) which is external to \(\mathcal{K}\) if the \({k\choose2}\) secants of \(\mathcal{K}\) intersect \(\ell\) in exactly \(k\) points. Similarly, \(k\)-arcs with the property that the \({k\choose2}\) secants formed by pairs of these points meet an exterior line in exactly \(k-1\) points will be called hyperfocused arcs. In this paper, the authors answer two open questions posed by Drake and Keating. They prove that: (1) there do not exist hyperfocused arcs in \(\text{PG}(2,q)\) for \(q\) odd; (2) there exist hyperfocused arcs of size different from \(2^d\) and \(2^d+2\).