English

Completely (Quasi-)Uniform Nested Boolean Steiner Quadruple Systems

Combinatorics 2026-01-27 v3

Abstract

Nested Steiner quadruple systems are designs derived from Steiner quadruple systems (SQSs) by partitioning each block into pairs. A nested SQS is completely uniform if every possible pair appears with equal multiplicity, and completely quasi-uniform if every pair appears with multiplicities that differ by at most one. An explicit construction on the Boolean SQS of order 2m2^m is presented, producing a nested SQS(2m)(2^m) that is completely uniform when mm is odd and completely quasi-uniform when mm is even for each integer m3m \ge 3 . These results resolve two open problems posed by Chee et al. (2025). The notion of completely uniform pairings is further generalized for tt-designs with t2t \ge 2. As an application, completely uniform nested 22-(2m,4,3)(2^m,4,3) designs give rise to fractional repetition codes with zero skip cost, requiring fewer storage nodes than constructions based on SQSs. In addition, small examples are provided for non-Boolean orders, establishing the existence of completely uniform nested SQS(v)(v) for all v50v \le 50.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.06663,
  title  = {Completely (Quasi-)Uniform Nested Boolean Steiner Quadruple Systems},
  author = {Xiao-Nan Lu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.06663},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

22 pages; Fixed minor typos

R2 v1 2026-07-01T05:26:23.906Z