The structure of dual Grassmann codes (Q281302)

Grassmann codes were introduced in [\textit{R. Pellikaan} (ed.) et al., Arithmetic, geometry, and coding theory. Proceedings of the international conference held at CIRM, Luminy, France, June 28-July 2, 1993. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter (1996; Zbl 0859.00020)], [\textit{C. Ryan}, Congr. Numerantium 57, 257--271 (1987; Zbl 0638.94021); Congr. Numerantium 57, 273--279 (1987; Zbl 0608.00016)] using the Grassmannian variety. A variation was introduced in [\textit{P. Beelen} et al., IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory 56, No. 7, 3166--3176 (2010; Zbl 1366.94576)], the affine Grassmann code. This article counts and classifies the minimum weigth codewords of the dual of Grassmann codes and the dual of affine Grasmann codes, by considering lines contained in a Grassmannian variety. Moreover, it proves that the increase of value of successive generalized Hamming weights is at most 2 and that the dual of a Grassmann code is generated by its minimum weight codewords. This has applications for the decoding of Grassmann codes.