Some bounds arising from a polynomial ideal associated to any t-design

Abstract: We consider ordered pairs

(X, m a t h c a l B)

where

X

is a finite set of size

v

and

m a t h c a l B

is some collection of

k

-element subsets of

X

such that every

t

-element subset of

X

is contained in exactly

l a m b d a

"blocks"

B i n m a t h c a l B

for some fixed

l a m b d a

. We represent each block

B

by a zero-one vector

m a t h b f c_{B}

of length

v

and explore the ideal

m a t h c a l I (m a t h c a l B)

of polynomials in

v

variables with complex coefficients which vanish on the set

m a t h b f c_{B} m i d B i n m a t h c a l B

. After setting up the basic theory, we investigate two parameters related to this ideal:

g a m m a_{1} (m a t h c a l B)

is the smallest degree of a non-trivial polynomial in the ideal

m a t h c a l I (m a t h c a l B)

and

g a m m a_{2} (m a t h c a l B)

is the smallest integer

s

such that

m a t h c a l I (m a t h c a l B)

is generated by a set of polynomials of degree at most

s

. We first prove the general bounds

t / 2 < g a m m a_{1} (m a t h c a l B) l e g a m m a_{2} (m a t h c a l B) l e k

. Examining important families of examples, we find that, for symmetric 2-designs and Steiner systems, we have

g a m m a_{2} (m a t h c a l B) l e t

. But we expect

g a m m a_{2} (m a t h c a l B)

to be closer to

k

for less structured designs and we indicate this by constructing infinitely many triple systems satisfying

g a m m a_{2} (m a t h c a l B) = k

.

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