Lower and upper chromatic numbers for BSTSs\((2^h-1)\) (Q5953267)

A mixed hypergraph is a triple \({\mathcal H}(X,{\mathcal C},{\mathcal D})\), where \(X\) is the vertex set and \({\mathcal C},{\mathcal D}\) are families of subsets of \(X\). The members of \({\mathcal C}\) and \({\mathcal D}\) are called \(\mathcal C\)-edges and \(\mathcal D\)-edges respectively. A proper \(k\)-colouring of a mixed hypergraph is a mapping from the vertex set into a set of colours \(\{1,2,\dots,k\}\) such that each \(\mathcal C\)-edge has at least two vertices with \(\mathcal C\)ommon colours and each \(\mathcal D\)-edge has at least two vertices with \(\mathcal D\)istinct colours. A mixed hypergraph is \(k\)-colourable if it admits a proper colouring with at most \(k\)-colours. The minimum admissible number of colours in a proper colouring of \(\mathcal H\) is called the lower chromatic number \(\chi({\mathcal H})\), the maximum number of colours in a strict proper colouring (all the colours are used) is the upper chromatic number \(\overline{\chi}({\mathcal H})\). A Steiner triple system \(\text{STS}(v)\) is defined as a pair \((X,{\mathcal B})\) where \(X\) is a finite set of vertices and \(\mathcal B\) is a family of \(3\)-element subsets of \(X\), called blocks, satisfying that each two vertices of \(X\) belong to a single block in \(\mathcal B\). A bi-Steiner triple system B\(\text{STS}(v)\) is a mixed hypergraph \({\mathcal H}(X,{\mathcal B},{\mathcal B})\). The paper contains a construction of an \(\text{STS}(2v+1)\) from an \(\text{STS}(v)\). The main result of the paper states that for all \(\text{STS}(2^h-1)\) obtained by the described construction from \(\text{STS}(3)\) with \(h<10\), the lower chromatic number coincides with the upper chromatic number. The result is obtained by a numerical analysis of some structural results on strict colouring of B\(\text{STS}(2^h-1)\). Moreover, it is shown that all the point-line designs associated with a projective geometry over GF(2) are subclasses of B\(\text{STS}(2^h-1)\) with \(\chi=\overline{\chi}=h\) for all values of \(h\).