Govaerts, P.; Storme, L. On a particular class of minihypers and its applications. I: The result for general \(q\). (English) Zbl 1022.51004 Des. Codes Cryptography 28, No. 1, 51-63 (2003). A partial \(s\)-spread \(S\) of \(\Sigma = \text{PG}(d,q)\) is a collection of mutually skew \(s\)-dimensional subspaces in \(\Sigma\). If all points of \(\Sigma\) are covered, \(S\) is called an \(s\)-spread; this is possible if and only if \((s + 1)|(d + 1)\). A partial spread which is not a spread is said to have positive deficiency. A blocking set \(B\) in \(\pi = \text{PG}(2,q)\) is a set of points in \(\pi\) such that every line of \(\pi\) meets \(B\) in at least one point. A blocking set is called nontrivial if it does not contain a line. Upper bounds on the size of maximal partial 1-spreads of \(\text{PG}(3,q)\) with positive deficiency have recently been improved by using an important link with blocking sets of \(\text{PG}(2,q)\). In the paper under review similar improvements are made for maximal partial \(s\)-spreads of positive deficiency whenever \((s+1)|(d+1)\), again by exploiting a link with nontrivial blocking sets of \(\text{PG}(2,q)\). The key ingredient is the use of (weighted) minihypers, first introduced in [N. Hamada and T. Helleseth, Math. Jap. 38, 925-939 (1993; Zbl 0786.05016)]. The results are then generalized to \(s\)-covers of \(\text{PG}(d,q)\); that is, subsets of s-dimensional subspaces of \(\text{PG}(d,q)\) which cover every point. Reviewer: Gary L.Ebert (Newark/Delaware) Cited in 3 ReviewsCited in 22 Documents MSC: 51E14 Finite partial geometries (general), nets, partial spreads 05B05 Combinatorial aspects of block designs 51E20 Combinatorial structures in finite projective spaces Keywords:partial spread; cover; minihyper Citations:Zbl 0786.05016 PDFBibTeX XMLCite \textit{P. Govaerts} and \textit{L. Storme}, Des. Codes Cryptography 28, No. 1, 51--63 (2003; Zbl 1022.51004) Full Text: DOI