A Polymatroid Approach to Generalized Weights of Rank Metric Codes

We consider the notion of a $(q,m)$-polymatroid, due to Shiromoto, and the more general notion of $(q,m)$-demi-polymatroid, and show how generalized weights can be defined for them. Further, we establish a duality for these weights analogous to Wei duality for generalized Hamming weights of linear codes. The corresponding results of Ravagnani for Delsarte rank metric codes, and Martinez-Penas and Matsumoto for relative generalized rank weights are derived as a consequence.Comment: 22 pages; with minor revisions in the previous versio

Computation of the aa-invariant of ladder determinantal rings

We solve the problem of effectively computing the $a$-invariant of ladder determinantal rings. In the case of a one-sided ladder, we provide a compact formula, while, for a large family of two-sided ladders, we provide an algorithmic solution.Comment: AmS-LaTeX, 20 pages; minor improvements of presentatio

Arithmetic Progressions in a Unique Factorization Domain

Pillai showed that any sequence of consecutive integers with at most 16 terms possesses one term that is relatively prime to all the others. We give a new proof of a slight generalization of this result to arithmetic progressions of integers and further extend it to arithmetic progressions in unique factorization domains of characteristic zero.Comment: Version 2 (to appear in Acta Arithmetica) with minor typos correcte

Maximum Number of Common Zeros of Homogeneous Polynomials over Finite Fields

About two decades ago, Tsfasman and Boguslavsky conjectured a formula for the maximum number of common zeros that $r$ linearly independent homogeneous polynomials of degree $d$ in $m+1$ variables with coefficients in a finite field with $q$ elements can have in the corresponding $m$-dimensional projective space. Recently, it has been shown by Datta and Ghorpade that this conjecture is valid if $r$ is at most $m+1$ and can be invalid otherwise. Moreover a new conjecture was proposed for many values of $r$ beyond $m+1$. In this paper, we prove that this new conjecture holds true for several values of $r$. In particular, this settles the new conjecture completely when $d=3$. Our result also includes the positive result of Datta and Ghorpade as a special case. Further, we determine the maximum number of zeros in certain cases not covered by the earlier conjectures and results, namely, the case of $d=q-1$ and of $d=q$. All these results are directly applicable to the determination of the maximum number of points on sections of Veronese varieties by linear subvarieties of a fixed dimension, and also the determination of generalized Hamming weights of projective Reed-Muller codes.Comment: 15 page

Affine Grassmann Codes

We consider a new class of linear codes, called affine Grassmann codes. These can be viewed as a variant of generalized Reed-Muller codes and are closely related to Grassmann codes. We determine the length, dimension, and the minimum distance of any affine Grassmann code. Moreover, we show that affine Grassmann codes have a large automorphism group and determine the number of minimum weight codewords.Comment: Slightly Revised Version; 18 page