Blocking Sets and Skew Subspaces of Projective Space

Abstract

In what follows, a theorem on blocking sets is generalized to higher dimensions. The result is then used to study maximal partial spreads of odd-dimensional projective spaces.Notation. The number of elements in a set X is denoted by |X|. Those elements in a set A which are not in the set Bare denoted by A — B. In a projective space Σ = PG(n, q) of dimension n over the field GF(q) of order q, ┌d(Ωd, Λd, etc.) will mean a subspace of dimension d. A hyperplane of Σ is a subspace of dimension n — 1, that is, of co-dimension one.A blocking set in a projective plane π is a subset S of the points of π such that each line of π contains at least one point in S and at least one point not in S. The following result is shown in [1], [2].