scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1998563

Publication date 29 October 2003

divisible designs elation groups homology groups projective planes

Combinatorial aspects of block designs (05B05) Combinatorial aspects of finite geometries (05B25) General block designs in finite geometry (51E05) Finite affine and projective planes (geometric aspects) (51E15)

Review text

In [\textit{C. Suetake}, J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 93, 93-111 (2001; Zbl 0967.05020)] the author used projective planes with small collineation groups of perspectivities to construct Hadamard designs. This idea is generalized in the present paper. Namely, it is shown that if \(\pi\) is a projective plane of order \(n\) which admits an elation group with a common center and common axis whose order is \(m \not\in \{1,n\}\), then there exists a symmetric \((n, {n\over m}, n, 0,m)\)-divisible design. Similarly, if \(\pi\) is a projective plane of order \(n\) which admits a homology group with a common center and common axis whose order is \(m \not\in \{1,n-1\}\), then there exists a symmetric \((n+1, {n-1\over m}, n, 0, m)\)-divisible design. In the latter case, if \(n\) is even, then necessarily \[ nx^2 + (-1)^{{1 \over 2} ({n-1 \over m})({n - 1 \over m} - 1)} ({n - 1 \over m}) y^2 = z^2 \] has a non-trivial solution over the integers. This result can be used, for instance, to show that certain purported projective planes, whose existence is not ruled out by the Bruck-Ryser-Chowla Theorem, could not have homology groups of certain orders.

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