No label defined (Q4934837)

A \(G\)-design of \(K_{v}\) of order \(v\) is a pair \((V,B)\) where \(V\) is the vertex set of \(K_{v}\) and \(B\) is a decomposition of the edge set of \(K_{v}\) into edge-disjoint copies of \(G\). Such a design is said to have no proper subsystem if there does not exist a \(G\)-design \((W,Q)\) where \(W \subset V\) and \(Q \subset B\). A covering of \(K_{v}\) with copies of \(G\) is an ordered triple \((V,B,P)\) where \(V\) is the vertex set of \(K_{v}\), \(B\) is a collection of edge-disjoint copies of \(G\) which partition \(E(K_{v}) \cup P\) where \(P \subseteq E(\lambda K_{v})\). The covering is minimum if \(|P|\) is least, and is a \(G\)-design if \(P=\varnothing \). In this paper, the authors prove that minimum coverings of \(K_{v}\) with copies of \(K_{4}-e\) which contain no proper subsystems exist if and only if \(v\not\in \{2,3,10\}\). The proof is split into two cases: \(v\equiv 6\pmod {10}\) and the rest. Use is made of the existence of idempotent commutative quasigroups \((X,\circ)\) of order \(2k+1\) for all \(k\), (for the first case), and of commutative quasigroups \((X, \circ)\) with holes of size 2 of order \(2k\geq 6\) (for the second case). Detailed constructions are given and for some values of \(v\), reference to the two URLs where the details are put up is given.