678 research outputs found
On the volumes and affine types of trades
A -trade is a pair of disjoint collections of subsets
(blocks) of a -set such that for every , any -subset of
is included in the same number of blocks of and of . It follows
that and this common value is called the volume of . If we
restrict all the blocks to have the same size, we obtain the classical
-trades as a special case of -trades. It is known that the minimum
volume of a nonempty -trade is . Simple -trades (i.e., those
with no repeated blocks) correspond to a Boolean function of degree at most
. From the characterization of Kasami--Tokura of such functions with
small number of ones, it is known that any simple -trade of volume at most
belongs to one of two affine types, called Type\,(A) and Type\,(B)
where Type\,(A) -trades are known to exist. By considering the affine
rank, we prove that -trades of Type\,(B) do not exist. Further, we derive
the spectrum of volumes of simple trades up to , extending the
known result for volumes less than . We also give a
characterization of "small" -trades for . Finally, an algorithm to
produce -trades for specified , is given. The result of the
implementation of the algorithm for , is reported.Comment: 30 pages, final version, to appear in Electron. J. Combi
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