Packing, covering and decomposing of a complete uniform hypergraph into delta-systems

Abstract

Anh-uniform hypergraph generated by a set of edges {E ₁,...,E _c} is said to be a delta-system Δ(p,h,c) if there is ap-element setF such that ∇F|=p andE _i⌢E _j=F,∀i≠j.

The main result of this paper says that givenp, h andc, there isn ₀ such that forn≥n ₀ the set of edges of a completeh-uniform hypergraphK _n ^h can be partitioned into subsets generating isomorphic delta-systems Δ(p, h, c) if and only if$\left( {\begin{array}{*{20}c} n \\ h \\ \end{array} } \right) \equiv 0(\bmod c)$. This result is derived from a more general theorem in which the maximum number of delta-systems Δ(p, h, c) that can be packed intoK _n ^h and the minimum number of delta-systems Δ(p, h, c) that can cover the edges ofK _n ^h are determined for largen. Moreover, we prove a theorem on partitioning of the edge set ofK _n ^h into subsets generating small but not necessarily isomorphic delta-systems.