Pasch trades with a negative block (Q409349)

When one Steiner triple system on \(v\) elements can be transformed into another on the same \(v\) elements by a sequence of operations that are inflations, reductions, and Pasch trades with a negative block, the two systems are termed \textit{equivalent}. It appears plausible that every two Steiner triple systems on the same element set are equivalent, but this remains open. In this paper, substantial progress is made on the problem, by showing that whenever the two systems can be obtained, one from the other, by a sequence of trades chosen from a large set of allowed trades, they are in fact equivalent.