Related papers: Groups with maximal irredundant covers and minimal…

A $3$-partition of an $n$-element set $V$ is a triple of pairwise disjoint nonempty subsets $X,Y,Z$ such that $V=X\cup Y\cup Z$. We determine the minimum size $\varphi_3(n)$ of a set $\mathcal{E}$ of triples such that for every 3-partition…

In a projective plane $\Pi_{q}$ (not necessarily Desarguesian) of order $q$, a point subset $\mathcal{S}$ is saturating (or dense) if any point of $\Pi_{q}\setminus \mathcal{S}$ is collinear with two points in $\mathcal{S}$. Modifying an…

Over the past few years, the codes $\mathcal{C}_{n-1}(n,q)$ arising from the incidence of points and hyperplanes in the projective space $\text{PG}(n,q)$ attracted a lot of attention. In particular, small weight codewords of…

A well known class of objects in combinatorial design theory are {group divisible designs}. Here, we introduce the $q$-analogs of group divisible designs. It turns out that there are interesting connections to scattered subspaces,…

An $(r, s)$-${\textit set}$ in ${\rm PG}(n, q)$ is a set of points, say $\mathcal X$, such that each $s$-dimensional projective subspace contains at most $r$ points of $\mathcal X$. We investigate $(n, n-2)$-sets and $(n-2, n-3)$-sets in…

A 2-covering for a finite group $G$ is a set of proper subgroups of $G$ such that every pair of elements of $G$ is contained in at least one subgroup in the set. The minimal number of subgroups needed to 2-cover a group $G$ is called the…

A $1$-avoiding set is a subset of $\mathbb{R}^n$ that does not contain pairs of points at distance $1$. Let $m_1(\mathbb{R}^n)$ denote the maximum fraction of $\mathbb{R}^n$ that can be covered by a measurable $1$-avoiding set. We prove two…

We determine the minimal number of separating invariants for the invariant ring of a matrix group $G < \mathrm{GL}_n(\mathbb{F}_q)$ over the finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$. We show that this minimal number can be obtained with invariants of…

Strong blocking sets and their counterparts, minimal codes, attracted lots of attention in the last years. Combining the concatenating construction of codes with a geometric insight into the minimality condition, we explicitly provide…

An irreducible ordinary character of a finite reductive group is called quadratic unipotent if it corresponds under Jordan decomposition to a semisimple element $s$ in a dual group such that $s^2=1$. We prove that there is a bijection…

A cover of a finite non-cyclic group $G$ is a family $\mathcal{H}$ of proper subgroups of $G$ whose union equals $G$. A cover of $G$ is called minimal if it has minimal size, and irredundant if it does not properly contain any other cover.…

Motivated by a question of Erd\H{o}s on blocking sets in a projective plane that intersect every line only a few times, several authors have used unions of algebraic curves to construct such sets in $\mathbb{P}^2(\mathbb{F}_q)$. In this…

Bishnoi conjectured that if a minimal t-fold blocking set in a projective plane of prime power order has maximal size then it is either a projective plane minus one point, the complement of a Baer subplane or a unital. In this note we prove…

In this note we will provide proofs for the various statements that have been made in the literature about blocking sets of index three. Our aim is to clarify what is known about the characterization of these sets. Specifically, we provide…

We prove that a non-empty set L of at most q^5+q^4+q^3+q^2+q+1 lines of PG(n, q) with the properties that (1) every point of PG(n,q) is incident with either 0 or q+1 elements of L, (2) every plane plane of PG(n, q) is incident with either…

A covering of a group is a finite set of proper subgroups whose union is the whole group. A covering is minimal if there is no covering of smaller cardinality, and it is nilpotent if all its members are nilpotent subgroups. We complete a…

Let $\Pi_q$ be an arbitrary finite projective plane of order $q$. A subset $S$ of its points is called saturating if any point outside $S$ is collinear with a pair of points from $S$. Applying probabilistic tools we improve the upper bound…

We introduce generator blocking sets of finite classical polar spaces. These sets are a generalisation of maximal partial spreads. We prove a characterization of these minimal sets of the polar spaces Q(2n,q), Q-(2n+1,q) and H(2n,q^2), in…

For a set $G$ of points in $\PG(m-1,q)$, let $\ex_q(G;n)$, denote the maximum size of a collection of points in $\PG(n-1,q)$ not containing a copy of $G$, up to projective equivalence. We show that \[\lim_{n\rightarrow \infty}…

This work focuses on higgledy-piggledy sets of $k$-subspaces in $\text{PG}(N,q)$, i.e. sets of projective subspaces that are 'well-spread-out'. More precisely, the set of intersection points of these $k$-subspaces with any $(N-k)$-subspace…