Hyperplane sections of determinantal varieties over finite fields and linear codes (Q776288)

Let \(q\) denote a prime power, let \(\mathrm{GF}(q)\) denote the finite field of order \(q\), let \(\ell,m\) denote positive integers and let \(M_{\ell, m}(R)\) denote the set of \(\ell\times m\) matrices over a ring \(R\). Consider the affine variety \[ D_t(\ell,m)=\{M\in M_{\ell, m}(\mathrm{GF}(q))\mid\operatorname{rank}(M)\leq t\}, \] and let \(\hat{D}_t(\ell,m)\) denote its projective analogue. Let \(\hat{n}=|\hat{D}_t(\ell,m)|\) and select a complete set of representatives \[ {\mathcal{C}}=\{M_1,M_2,\dots, M_{\hat{n}}\} \subset M_{\ell,m}(\mathrm{GF}(q)) \] of the elements of \(\hat{D}_t(\ell,m)\). Define the evaluation map on the vector space \(\mathrm{GF}(q)[x]_1\) of degree \(1\) homogeneous polynomials \[ Ev: \mathrm{GF}(q)[x]_1\to \mathrm{GF}(q)^{\hat{n}} \] by \(Ev(f)=(f(M_1),f(M_2),\dots, f(M_{\hat{n}})).\) Define the linear code \(\hat{C}_{det}(t;\ell,m)\) to be the image of \(Ev\). This is a \(\hat{k}\)-dimensional linear code of length \(\hat{n}\), where \(\hat{k}=\ell m\). While this code depends on the choices in \({\mathcal{C}}\), it's monomial equivalence class does not. Therefore, the dimension, minimum distance, weight distribution, and generalized Hamming weights only depend on \(q,\ell,m,t\). In the case \(t=1\), the minimum distance, weight distribution, and generalized Hamming weights of this code are known (in part due to the authors themselves -- see their 2015 paper co-authored with S. Hasan published in the same journal [Discrete Math. 338, No. 8, 1493--1500 (2015; Zbl 1408.94977)]). The paper under review generalizes this to all \(t\). That's remarkable enough, but more is proven. To mention a few: the authors also show (a) that all the codewords of codewords of minimum weight generate the code, and (b) that the minimum distance of the dual code is \(3\). As an intriguing aside, the authors note that expressions in their formulas for the weights also occur in formulas for eigenvalues of certain association schemes. This curious relationship is suggested in a few remarks at the end of their section 3. The interested reader is referred to the paper itself for details.