No Arabic abstract
The iterative absorption method has recently led to major progress in the area of (hyper-)graph decompositions. Amongst other results, a new proof of the Existence conjecture for combinatorial designs, and some generalizations, was obtained. Here, we illustrate the method by investigating triangle decompositions: we give a simple proof that a triangle-divisible graph of large minimum degree has a triangle decomposition and prove a similar result for quasi-random host graphs.
We define a notion of vexillar design for the flag variety in the spirit of the spherical designs introduced by Delsarte, Goethals and Seidel. For a finite subgroup of the orthogonal group, we explain how conditions on the group have the orbits of any flag under the group action be a design and point out why the minima of a lattice in the sense of the general Hermite constant forming a 4-design implies being extreme. The reasoning proves useful to show the extremality of many new expected examples ($E_8$, $La_{24}$, Barnes-Wall lattices, Thompson-Smith lattice for instance) that were out of reach until now.
A graphical design is a proper subset of vertices of a graph on which many eigenfunctions of the Laplacian operator have mean value zero. In this paper, we show that extremal independent sets make extremal graphical designs, that is, a design on which the maximum possible number of eigenfunctions have mean value zero. We then provide examples of such graphs and sets, which arise naturally in extremal combinatorics. We also show that sets which realize the isoperimetric constant of a graph make extremal graphical designs, and provide examples for them as well. We investigate the behavior of graphical designs under the operation of weak graph product. In addition, we present a family of extremal graphical designs for the hypercube graph.
A generalization of forming derived and residual designs from $t$-designs to subspace designs is proposed. A $q$-analog of a theorem by Van Trung, van Leijenhorst and Driessen is proven, stating that if for some (not necessarily realizable) parameter set the derived and residual parameter set are realizable, the same is true for the reduced parameter set. As a result, we get the existence of several previously unknown subspace designs. Some consequences are derived for the existence of large sets of subspace designs. Furthermore, it is shown that there is no $q$-analog of the large Witt design.
In this article, three types of joins are introduced for subspaces of a vector space. Decompositions of the Gra{ss}mannian into joins are discussed. This framework admits a generalization of large set recursion methods for block designs to subspace designs. We construct a $2$-$(6,3,78)_5$ design by computer, which corresponds to a halving $operatorname{LS}_5[2](2,3,6)$. The application of the new recursion method to this halving and an already known $operatorname{LS}_3[2](2,3,6)$ yields two infinite two-parameter series of halvings $operatorname{LS}_3[2](2,k,v)$ and $operatorname{LS}_5[2](2,k,v)$ with integers $vgeq 6$, $vequiv 2mod 4$ and $3leq kleq v-3$, $kequiv 3mod 4$. Thus in particular, two new infinite series of nontrivial subspace designs with $t = 2$ are constructed. Furthermore as a corollary, we get the existence of infinitely many nontrivial large sets of subspace designs with $t = 2$.
A notion of $t$-designs in the symmetric group on $n$ letters was introduced by Godsil in 1988. In particular $t$-transitive sets of permutations form a $t$-design. We derive special lower bounds for $t=1$ and $t=2$ by a power moment method. For general $n,t$ we give a %linear programming lower bound . For $nge 4$ and $t=2,$ this bound is strong enough to show a lower bound on the size of such $t$-designs of $n(n-1)dots (n-t+1),$ which is best possible when sharply $t$-transitive sets of permutations exist. This shows, in particular, that tight $2$-designs do not exist.