Generalized complete mappings, neofields, sequenceable groups and block designs. I (Q762163)

More than forty years ago \textit{H. B. Mann} introduced the concept of a complete mapping of a finite group and showed that, when a group has such a complete mapping, the Latin square formed by its Cayley table has a transversal and, hence, an orthogonal mate. [See Am. Math. Statistics 13, 418-423 (1942; Zbl 0060.027)]. During the last decades the subject has been studied by several authors, their results can be found in the joint book of the second author and the reviewer [Latin squares and their applications (1974; Zbl 0283.05014)]. In the present paper, the authors defined two generalizations of the concept of a complete mapping to be called a (K,\(\lambda)\) complete mapping and a (K,\(\lambda)\) near complete mapping. They showed how these generalizations are related to sequenceable groups and R-sequenceable groups respectively and that together they permit a complete characterization of left neofields. The above mentioned concepts were introduced in the following papers of \textit{B. Gordon} [Pac. J. Math. 11, 1309-1313 (1961; Zbl 0103.262)], \textit{R. J. Friedlander, B. Gordon} and \textit{M. D. Miller} [Proc. 9th Southeast Conf. on Combinatorics, Graph Theory and Computing, Boca Raton, 1978, 307-321 (1978; Zbl 0407.20043)] and \textit{L. J. Paige} [Duke Math. J. 16, 39-60 (1949; Zbl 0040.305)].