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A note on Tight Irreducible Affine Spreads

Combinatorics 2026-07-26 v1

Abstract

Let Fqn{\mathbb F}_q^n denote the vector space of dimension nn over Fq{\mathbb F}_q and AG(n,q)(n,q) denote the corresponding affine space. An affine vector space partition\textit{affine vector space partition} of AG(n,q)(n,q) is a collection P{\mathcal P} of affine subspaces that partition the points of AG(n,q)(n,q). If all subspaces in P{\mathcal P} have the same dimension dd, then P{\mathcal P} is called an \textit{affine d-spread}. We say that an affine partition P{\mathcal P} is completely tight\textit{completely tight} if for any pair C,CPC,C'\in{\mathcal P} with C=v+SC=v+S, C=v+SC'=v'+S', where v,vAG(n,q)v,v'\in{\rm AG}(n,q) and SSS\neq S' are linear subspaces of Fqn{\mathbb F}_q^n, we have SS={0} S\cap S'=\{{\bf 0}\}. An affine partition P{\mathcal P} is said to be irreducible\textit{irreducible} if there is no subset PP{\mathcal P}'\subset {\mathcal P} such that 1<P<P1<|{\mathcal P}'|<|{\mathcal P}| and the union of all subspaces in P{\mathcal P}' is a subspace of AG(n,q)(n,q). For all d1d \geq 1 and n>2dn>2d, we construct a completely tight irreducible affine dd-spread of AG(n,q)(n,q). This also settles a recent conjecture of Bamberg et al. on the existence of tight irreducible affine dd-spreads.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.23411,
  title  = {A note on Tight Irreducible Affine Spreads},
  author = {Fusun Akman and Papa Sissokho},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.23411},
  year   = {2026}
}

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5 pages