Explicit Constructions of Optimal Blocking Sets and Minimal Codes

Journal Article (2026)
Author(s)

Anurag Bishnoi (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)

István Tomon (Umeå University)

Research Group
Discrete Mathematics and Optimization
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00493-026-00202-5 Final published version
More Info
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Publication Year
2026
Language
English
Research Group
Discrete Mathematics and Optimization
Journal title
Combinatorica
Issue number
2
Volume number
46
Article number
13
Downloads counter
14
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Abstract

A strong s-blocking set in a projective space is a set of points that intersects each codimension-s subspace in a spanning set of the subspace. We present an explicit construction of such sets in a (k-1)-dimensional projective space over Fq of size Os(qsk), which is optimal up to the constant factor depending on s. This also yields an optimal explicit construction of affine blocking sets in Fqk with respect to codimension-(s+1) affine subspaces, and of s-minimal codes. Our approach is motivated by a recent construction of Alon, Bishnoi, Das, and Neri of strong 1-blocking sets, which uses expander graphs with a carefully chosen set of vectors as their vertex set. The main novelty of our work lies in constructing specific hypergraphs on top of these expander graphs, where tree-like configurations correspond to strong s-blocking sets. We also discuss some connections to size-Ramsey numbers of hypergraphs, which might be of independent interest.