English

Blocking subspaces with points and hyperplanes

Combinatorics 2023-12-05 v2

Abstract

In this paper, we characterise the smallest sets BB consisting of points and hyperplanes in PG(n,q)\text{PG}(n,q), such that each kk-space is incident with at least one element of BB. If k>n12k > \frac {n-1} 2, then the smallest construction consists only of points. Dually, if k<n12k < \frac{n-1}2, the smallest example consists only of hyperplanes. However, if k=n12k = \frac{n-1}2, then there exist sets containing both points and hyperplanes, which are smaller than any blocking set containing only points or only hyperplanes.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2208.14773,
  title  = {Blocking subspaces with points and hyperplanes},
  author = {Sam Adriaensen and Maarten De Boeck and Lins Denaux},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2208.14773},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

7 pages. UPDATE: After publication of this paper, we found out that in case $k = \frac{n-1}2$, the correct lower bound and a classification of the smallest examples was already established by Blokhuis, Brouwer, and Sz\H{o}nyi [A. Blokhuis, A. E. Brouwer, T. Sz\H{o}nyi. On the chromatic number of $q$-Kneser graphs. Des. Codes Crytpogr. 65:187-197, 2012]