On the cardinality of blocking sets in PG(2,q) (Q795332)

In this interesting paper the authors consider the existence problem for blocking sets in PG(2,q), \(q\neq 2\). Recall that a blocking set is a subset B of PG(2,q) such that each line contains both a point in B and a point outside of B. The authors prove the following theorem: Define a function m(q) as follows: \(m(q)=\sqrt{q}\) if q is a square; \(m(q)=q(q+1)/2\) if q is a prime; \(m(q)=p^{h-d},\) if \(q=p^ h\) where h is an odd integer and where d is the largest divisor \(\neq h\) of h. Then there exists a blocking set with exactly k elements in \(PG(2,q)\) whenever \(q+m(q)+1\leq k\leq q^ 2-m(q).\) This result contains all the known existence results on blocking sets: no blocking set of a size different from one of those mentioned above is known to exist.