On GMW designs and cyclic Hadamard designs (Q676710)

In \textit{W.-A. Jackson} [Geom. Dedicata 46, No. 2, 197-206 (1993; Zbl 0788.51012)] one of the authors constructed a class of cyclic Hadamard 2-designs with parameters \(v=q^2-1\), \(k={1\over 2}q^2-1\), and \(\lambda={1\over 4}q^2-1\), where \(q=2^h\) with \(h>1\). These designs were shown to admit SL\((2,q)\) as a point transitive automorphism group and, in fact, were shown to be characterized by this property. The oval designs of \textit{A. Maschietti} [J. Geom. 44, No. 1/2, 107-116 (1992; Zbl 0757.51006)] are contained in this class of designs, and were classified within this family by Jackson. In the paper under review the authors show that the above designs of Jackson are actually a subclass of the GMW designs discovered by Gordon, Mills and Welch almost 40 years ago (see \textit{B. Gordon, W. H. Mills} and \textit{L. R. Welch} [Can. J. Math. 14, 614-625 (1962; Zbl 0111.24201)]). More significantly, the authors obtain a characterization of the GMW designs analogous to the characterization given by Jackson that is mentioned above. In addition, the GMW designs are shown to contain a family of generalized Maschietti designs, and these designs are then classified amongst the GMW designs which are cyclic Hadamard 2-designs. Thus the present paper is essentially a complete analogue of the paper of Jackson cited above. It should also be noted that similar results were independently obtained by \textit{T. E. Norwood} and \textit{Q. Xiang} in the paper [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 78, No. 1, 162-168, Art. No. TA962755 (1997; Zbl 0871.05009)] that computes the 2-rank of these generalized Maschietti designs, thereby verifying a conjecture of Assmus and Key.