Special Session 78: 

Linear Codes Supporting Combinatorial t designs

Chunming Tang
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Peoples Rep of China
Co-Author(s):    
Abstract:
The first linear code supporting a $4$-design was the $[11, 6, 5]$ ternary Golay code discovered in 1949 by Golay. In the past 71 years, sporadic linear codes holding $4$-designs or $5$-designs were discovered and many infinite families of linear codes supporting $3$-designs were constructed. However, the question as to whether there is an infinite family of linear codes holding an infinite family of $t$-designs for $t\geq 4$ remains open for 71 years. In this talk, we shall present an infinite family of BCH codes of length $2^{2m+1}+1$ over $\mathrm{GF}(2^{2m+1})$ holding an infinite family of $4$-$(2^{2m+1}+1, 6, 2^{2m}-4)$ designs, which settles this long-standing problem. Moreover, an infinite family of linear codes holding the spherical design $S(3, 5, 4^m+1)$ will also be presented.