Steiner 2-designs


Designs S(2,4,28) with nontrivial automorphisms

There are 4466 designs S(2,4,28) with nontrivial automorphism groups. They were classified in the paper Glas. Mat. Ser. III 37(57) (2002), 259-268. A gnu-zipped list of incidence matrices is available for download. The following table contains the distribution of the designs by order of full automorphism group.

  |Aut|     Freq.     |Aut|     Freq.     |Aut|     Freq.     |Aut|     Freq.  
12096 1 48 12 18 1 6 60
1512 1 42 1 16 10 4 374
216 1 32 2 12 12 3 1849
192 2 27 1 9 18 2 2028
72 1 24 12 8 71    
64 1 21 6 7 2    

Designs with these parameters are unitals of order 3. Exactly 17 of them can be embedded in projective planes of order 9. The embedded S(2,4,28)s were classified by Pentilla and Royle in Des. Codes Cryptography 6 (1995), 229-245. We repeated the calculation and got the same numbes of inequivalent unitals:

One of the unitals in the Hall plane is self-dual, so the total number of embeddable S(2,4,28)s is 17 up to isomorphism. They are designs number 381, 503, 520, 521, 589, 594, 597, 711, 713, 912, 913, 944, 1000, 1002, 1050, 1171, and 4460 in our list of incidence matrices.


Designs S(2,4,37)

There are two S(2,4,37) designs with automorphisms of order 37 and 284 with automorphisms of order 11. In the paper Ars Combin. 78 (2006), 127-135 automorphisms of order 2 and 3 were studied and used to find many more examples. Here is a list of 51402 non-isomorphic S(2,4,37) designs. Some of them contain S(2,3,9) subdesigns, closing a gap in the embedding spectrum of S(2,3,9) into S(2,4,v) (see M.Meszka, A.Rosa, Embedding Steiner triple systems into Steiner systems S(2,4,v), Discrete Math. 274 (2004), 199-212). Below is the distribution by full automorphism group order.

  |Aut|     Freq.  
1111
544
371
334
272
187
11280
9203
31748
249152

Involutory automorphisms with the maximum number of fixed points proved particularly prolific. The corresponding orbit matrices contain a linear space with 13 points and 23 lines as the fixed part, and (12,3,2) BIBDs as the non-fixed part. Here are 5000 such orbit matrices. They can be indexed to more than 12 million incidence matrices of S(2,4,37) designs. Most of them are probably non-isomorphic, but this has been verified only for designs arising from a dozen of orbit matrices (these are the 49152 designs with |Aut|=2).


Designs S(2,5,41)

R.Mathon and A.Rosa classified S(2,5,41) designs with automorphisms of order 5. Four designs were found and another one (with full automorphism group of order 24) was obtained by applying a transformation. I managed to find all S(2,5,41)s with automorphisms of order 3. There are 12 such designs, nine of which were previously unknown. This result was published in J. Combin. Math. Combin. Comput. 43 (2002), 83-99. Subsequently I also classified S(2,5,41)s with automorphisms of order 4, but all such designs were already known. However, the search produced a new design with a single involution. The result was presented at the 2nd Croatian Mathematical Congress.

Thus, there are at least 15 non-isomorphic S(2,5,41) designs. Here is a list of incidence matrices, and the following table contains distribution by size of full automorphism group.

  |Aut|    Freq.  
2051
1202
242
201
184
121
91
62
21

Designs S(2,5,45)

Designs S(2,5,45) with prescribed automorphism groups were constructed in:

More examples can be constructed by so-called paramodifications, including some with trivial full automorphism groups; see

Together there are at least 30 non-isomorphic S(2,5,45) designs. Here is the distribution by order of full automorphism group and 2-rank:

  |Aut|    2-rank    Freq.  
360451
160361
72453
72373
40451
32361
24383
8451
8372
6372
4376
2372
1374

Designs S(2,5,65)

Designs with parameters S(2,5,65) are unitals of order 4. Stoichev and Tonchev performed a nonexhaustive search for unitals in projective planes of order 16 in Discrete Appl. Math. 102 (2000), 151-158. From their data 73 non-isomorphic S(2,5,65) designs can be reconstructed. Two further ones with cyclic automorphism groups are known. Together with A. Nakic and M.O. Pavcevic, we classified the S(2,5,65) designs with a nonabelian group of order 39 (there are 1284), and costructed more examples with other automorphism groups. The work is published in J. Combin. Des. 19 (2011), 290-303.

The total number of non-isomorphic S(2,5,65)s is at least 1777. A gnu-zipped list of incidence matrices is available here, and the following table contains the distribution by full automorphism group size.

  |Aut|     Freq.     |Aut|     Freq.     |Aut|     Freq.     |Aut|     Freq.     |Aut|     Freq.  
249600 1 300 10 150 2 64 67 20 2
1200 1 260 1 128 82 50 24 16 12
780 1 256 12 100 89 48 7 13 62
768 3 200 17 96 5 39 1277 12 2
600 3 192 8 80 2 32 57 8 12
384 1 156 1 78 4 24 8 4 4

Here are some S(2,5,65)s embedded as unitals in the known projective planes of order 16. Most of them are from Stoichev and Tonchev's paper.


Designs S(2,6,66)

There are three non-isomorphic S(2,6,66) designs with automorphisms of order 13. Full automorphism groups are of order 39. The three designs can be distinguished by the number of complete quadrilaterals: 53053, 52884 and 53729 (complete quadrilaterals are sets of 4 lines intersecting in 6 points). These designs are not resolvable; it is not known whether there are any resolvable S(2,6,66)s.


Designs S(2,7,175)

Z. Janko and V. D. Tonchev constructed a S(2,7,175) design with automorphism group of order 4200 in J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 83 (1998), 152-157. There is another such design with automorphism group of order 1050, a subgroup of the group of Janko and Tonchev. Incidence matrices of the two designs are here.


Vedran Krcadinac,