University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Honors Theses Student Research 2016 Partitioning groups with difference sets Rebecca Funke Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/honors-theses Part of the Mathematics Commons Recommended Citation Funke, Rebecca, "Partitioning groups with difference sets" (2016). Honors Theses. Paper 956. This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Research at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Partitioning Groups with Difference sets Rebecca Funke Honors Thesis∗ Department of Mathematics & Computer Science University of Richmond ∗Under the direction of Dr. James A. Davis The signatures below, by the thesis advisor, the departmental reader, and the honors coordinator for mathematics, certify that this thesis, prepared by Rebecca Funke, has been approved, as to style and content. (Dr. James Davis, thesis advisor) (Dr. Della Dumbaugh, departmental reader) (Dr. Van Nall, honors coordinator) Abstract This thesis explores the use of difference sets to partition algebraic groups. Difference sets are a tool belonging to both group theory and combinatorics that provide symmetric properties that can be map into over mathematical fields such as design theory or coding theory. In my work, I will be taking algebraic groups and partitioning them into a subgroup and multiple McFarland difference sets. This partitioning can then be mapped to an association scheme. This bridge between difference sets and association schemes have important contributions to coding theory. Contents 0 Preliminaries 1 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Applications to design theory .