On directed designs with block size five

DOI10.1007/BF01220297MaRDI QIDQ1976887zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors Andrew Bowler, Kathleen A. S. Quinn, Michael John Grannell, T. S. Griggs

Publication date 20 April 2001

Published in Journal of Geometry (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01220297

zbMATH Keywords

directed design

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Combinatorial aspects of block designs (05B05)

Review text

A \(t\)-\((v,k,\lambda)\) directed design is a pair \(({\mathcal P},{\mathcal B})\) where \({\mathcal P}\) is a set of \(v\) elements, or points, and \({\mathcal B}\) is a collection of ordered \(k\)-tuples of distinct elements of \({\mathcal P}\), called blocks, with the property that every ordered \(t\)-tuple of distinct elements of \({\mathcal P}\) occurs in exactly \(\lambda\) blocks (as a subsequence). In this paper the authors restrict their attention to directed designs with \(\lambda = 1\), \(k = 5\) and \(t=3,\) 4. For \(t=3\) no designs were previously known. \textit{A. Mahmoodi} [Combinatorial and algorithmic aspects of directed designs, PhD thesis, University of Toronto (1995)] showed by computer search that there is no such design for \(v=5, 6\) or \(7\). The authors give an analytical proof of this result. They also construct the first known \(3\)-\((v,5,1)\) directed designs, namely for \(v=26\), 37. In particular, they have determined, by computer search, that there are precisely two non-isomorphic \(3\)-\((26,5,1)\) directed designs that are invariant under the group of mappings \(\{z \mapsto az+b\mid a,b \in Z_{26}\) and \((a,26)=1\}\). One of these can be used to show that there exists a \(3\)-\((25^n+1,5,1)\) directed design for any \(n \geq 1\). For the case \(t=4\), the authors construct \(4\)-\((v,5,1)\) directed designs for the new values \(v=7,8,13,18\) and \(48\). For \(v=8\), 18 and 48 the designs were constructed by hand or by computers assuming the action of a group of the form \(\text{PGL}_2(p^\alpha)\). For \(v=7\) the cyclic group \(\{z \mapsto z+b\mid b \in Z_7\}\) was used, and for \(v=13\) the Frobenius group \(\{z \mapsto az+b\mid a,b \in Z_{13}\) and \(a \neq 0\}\) was used. The existence of a \(4\)-\((7,5,1)\) directed design is of particular importance as it permits the construction of the first infinite class of \(4\)-\((v,5,1)\) directed designs, namely the set of \(4\)-\((2^n-1,5,1)\) directed designs for all \(n \geq 3\).

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