Arcs with large conical subsets (Q986721)

The authors study arcs in PG\((2,q)\), \(q\) being odd, that comprise \((q+3)/2\) points of a conic \(C\) and at least two additional/supplementary points that are all external to \(C\) (type E), or \((q+1)/2\) points of \(C\) and two or more supplementary points that are either all internal to \(C\) (type I) or some (but not all) of them are external to \(C\) (type M). In the case of two supplementary points -- which is the core of the paper -- a complete (computer-free) classification of such arcs is given, together with an explicit formula for the number of nonequivalent arcs (with respect to the action of PGL\((3,q)\)). This is mainly achieved by employing properties of the cyclic group of norm-one elements of the field GF\((q^2)\) and some basic graph-theoretical tools. It is subsequently shown that arcs of type I cannot have more than four supplementary points and those attaining this bound are explicitly described. The paper is finished by a tabular summary of the authors' computer search for arcs having as many as 8 supplementary points (type M) for a large number of the values of \(q\) (the largest being 251).