Tactical decompositions of designs over finite fields (Q499657)

Let \(\Psi\) be the set of all \(1\)-spaces of a finite vector space \(V\) over a finite field \(F\). Elements of \(\Psi\) are called points. A decomposition of a design \(\mathcal B\) over a finite field \(F\) is a partition of the set of points \(\Psi = \Psi_1 \sqcup \dots \sqcup \Psi_m\) and the set \({\mathcal B} = {\mathcal B}_1 \sqcup \cdots \sqcup {\mathcal B}_n\). A decomposition is called tactical if there exist nonnegative integers \(\rho_{ij}\), \(\kappa_{ij}\), \(i=1,2,\dots,m\), \(j=1,2,\dots,n\) such that (1) every point in \(\Psi_i\) is contained in \(\rho_{ij}\) blocks in \({\mathcal B}_j\), and (2) each block in \({\mathcal B}_j\) contains \(\kappa_{ij}\) points in \(\Psi_i\). The matrices \([\rho_{ij}]\) and \([\kappa_{ij}]\) are called tactical decomposition matrices. ``An automorphism group of an incidence structure \(\mathcal I\) induces a tactical decomposition on \(\mathcal I\). It is well known that tactical decompositions of \(t\)-designs satisfy certain necessary conditions which can be expressed as equations in terms of the coefficients of tactical decomposition matrices.'' In this article, the authors describe results for tactical decompositions of \(q\)-analogs of \(t\)-designs, \(2\)-\((v,k,\lambda_2;q)\) designs. They show that the coefficients of tacatical decomposition matrices of a design over a finite field satisfy a system of equations. In addition, they consider the case for the binary field \(F_2\) and obtain an additional system of equations for the coefficients in this case.