tactical decomposition
Let be an incidence structure with point set and block set .Let be a partition of into classes , and a partitionof into classes . Let denote for a moment the numberof blocks in class incident
with point p, and thenumber of points in class incident with block b. Now the pair is said to be
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point-tactical iff is for any p thesame for all , and is the same for all p within aclass ,
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block-tactical iff is for any b thesame for all , and is the same for all b within aclass ,
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a tactical decomposition if both hold.
An incidence structure admitting a tactical decomposition with a single point class is called resolvable and its resolution. Note is now a constant throughout. If the constant is 1 theresolution is called a parallelism.
Example of point- and block-tactical: let be simple (it’s ahypergraph) and let partition and into a single classeach. This is point-tactical for a regular hypergraph, and block-tactical fora uniform hypergraph.
Example of parallelism: an affine plane (lines are the blocks, with parallel ones in the same class).
A natural example of a tactical decomposition is provided by the automorphismgroup of . It induces a tactical decomposition with as point classesthe orbits of acting on and as block classes the orbits of actingon .
Trivial example of a tactical decomposition: a partition into singletonpoint and block classes.
The term tactical decomposition (taktische Zerlegung in German) wasintroduced by Peter Dembowski.