Cyclic relative difference families with block size four and their applications

Abstract: Given a subgroup

H

of a group

(G, +)

, a

(G, H, k, 1)

difference family (DF) is a set

m a t h c a l F

of

k

-subsets of

G

such that

f - f^{'} : f, f^{'} i n F, f e q f^{'}, F i n m a t h c a l F = G s e t m i n u s H

. Let

g m a t h b b Z_{g h}

is the subgroup of order

h

in

m a t h b b Z_{g h}

generated by

g

. A

(m a t h b b Z_{g h}, g m a t h b b Z_{g h}, k, 1)

-DF is called cyclic and written as a

(g h, h, k, 1)

-CDF. This paper shows that for

h i n 2, 3, 6

, there exists a

(g h, h, 4, 1)

-CDF if and only if

g h e q u i v h p m o d 12

,

g g e q 4

and

(g, h) o t i n (9, 3), (5, 6)

. As a corollary, it is shown that a 1-rotational S

(2, 4, v)

exists if and only if

v e q u i v 4 p m o d 12

and

v e q 28

. This solves the long-standing open problem on the existence of a 1-rotational S

(2, 4, v)

. As another corollary, we establish the existence of an optimal

(v, 4, 1)

-optical orthogonal code with

l f l o o r (v - 1) / 12 f l o o r

codewords for any positive integer

v e q u i v 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 p m o d 12

and

v e q 25

. We also give applications of our results to cyclic group divisible designs with block size four and optimal cyclic

3

-ary constant-weight codes with weight four and minimum distance six.

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