On Automorphism Groups of Divisible Designs

Abstract

A (group) divisible design is a tactical configuration for which the v points are split into m classes of n each, such that points have joining number λ (resp. λ2) if and only if they are in the same (resp. in different) classes. We are interested in such designs with a nice automorphism group. We first investigate divisible designs with equally many points and blocks admitting an automorphism group acting regularly on all points and on all blocks, i.e., with a Singer group (Singer [50] obtained the first result in this direction for the finite projective spaces).As in the case of block designs, one may expect a divisible design with a Singer group to be equivalent to some sort of difference set; as it turns out, one here obtains a generalisation of the relative difference sets of Butson and Elliott [11] and [20].