Cyclic relative difference families with block size four and their applications.

Given a subgroup H of a group (G , +) , a (G , H , k , 1) difference family (DF) is a set F of k -subsets of G such that { f − f ′ : f , f ′ ∈ F , f ≠ f ′ , F ∈ F } = G ∖ H. Let g Z g h be the subgroup of order h in Z g h generated by g. A (Z g h , g Z g h , k , 1) -DF is called cyclic and written as a (g h , h , k , 1) -CDF. This paper shows that for h ∈ { 2 , 3 , 6 } , there exists a (g h , h , 4 , 1) -CDF if and only if g h ≡ h (mod 12) , g ⩾ 4 and (g , h) ∉ { (9 , 3) , (5 , 6) }. As a corollary, it is shown that a 1-rotational Steiner system S (2 , 4 , v) exists if and only if v ≡ 4 (mod 12) and v ≠ 28. This solves the long-standing open problem on the existence of a 1-rotational S (2 , 4 , v). As another corollary, we establish the existence of an optimal (v , 4 , 1) -optical orthogonal code with ⌊ (v − 1) / 12 ⌋ codewords for any positive integer v ≡ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 6 (mod 12) and v ≠ 25. We also give applications of our results to cyclic group divisible designs with block size four and optimal cyclic 3-ary constant-weight codes with weight four and minimum distance six. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]