Partitioning Projective Geometries into Caps

Abstract

In [2] by means of a fairly lengthy argument involving Hermitian varieties it was shown that PG(2n, q2) can be partitioned into (q2n++ 1 + 1)/(q + l)-caps. Moreover, these caps were shown to constitute the “large points” of a PG(2n, q) in a natural way. In [3] a similar argument was used to show that once two disjoint (n – l)-subspaces are removed from PG(2n, q2), the remaining points can be partitioned into (q2n – 1)/(q2 – l)-caps.The purpose of this paper is to give a short proof of the results found in [2], and then use the technique developed to partition PG(2n, q) into (qn + l)-caps for n even and q any prime-power. Moreover, these caps can be treated in a natural way as the “large points” of a PG(n – 1, q).