The characterization of combinatorial or geometric structures in terms of their groups of automorphisms has attracted considerable interest in the last decades and is now commonly viewed as a natural generalization of Felix Klein’s Erlangen program(1872).Inaddition,especiallyfor?nitestructures,importantapplications to practical topics such as design theory, coding theory and cryptography have made the ?eld even more attractive. The subject matter of this research monograph is the study and class- cation of ?ag-transitive Steiner designs, that is, combinatorial t-(v,k,1) designs which admit a group of automorphisms acting transitively on incident point-block pairs. As a consequence of the classi?cation of the ?nite simple groups, it has been possible in recent years to characterize Steiner t-designs, mainly for t=2,adm- ting groups of automorphisms with su?ciently strong symmetry properties. For Steiner 2-designs, arguably the most general results have been the classi?cation of all point 2-transitive Steiner 2-designs in 1985 by W. M. Kantor, and the almost complete determination of all ?ag-transitive Steiner 2-designs announced in 1990 byF.Buekenhout,A.Delandtsheer,J.Doyen,P.B.Kleidman,M.W.Liebeck, and J. Saxl. However, despite the classi?cation of the ?nite simple groups, for Steiner t-designs witht> 2 most of the characterizations of these types have remained long-standing challenging problems. Speci?cally, the determination of all ?- transitive Steiner t-designs with 3? t? 6 has been of particular interest and object of research for more than 40 years.

Continuing in the bestselling, informative tradition of the first edition, the Handbook of Combinatorial Designs, Second Edition remains the only resource to contain all of the most important results and tables in the field of combinatorial design. This handbook covers the constructions, properties, and applications of designs as well as existence

This Festschrift volume contains the proceedings of the conference Mathematical Methods in Computer Science, MMICS 2008, held December 2008, in Karlsruhe, Germany, in memory of Thomas Beth. The themes of the conference reflect his many interests.

Combinatorial Designs for Authentication and Secrecy Codes is a succinct in-depth review and tutorial of a subject that promises to lead to major advances in computer and communication security. This monograph provides a tutorial on combinatorial designs, which gives an overview of the theory. Furthermore, the application of combinatorial designs to authentication and secrecy codes is described in depth. This close relationship of designs with cryptography and information security was first revealed in Shannon's seminal paper on secrecy systems. We bring together in one source foundational and current contributions concerning design-theoretic constructions and characterizations of authentication and secrecy codes.

The monograph provides the first full discussion of flag-transitive Steiner designs. This is a central part of the study of highly symmetric combinatorial configurations at the interface of several mathematical disciplines, like finite or incidence geometry, group theory, combinatorics, coding theory, and cryptography. In a sufficiently self-contained and unified manner the classification of all flag-transitive Steiner designs is presented. This recent result settles interesting and challenging questions that have been object of research for more than 40 years. Its proof combines methods from finite group theory, incidence geometry, combinatorics, and number theory. The book contains a broad introduction to the topic, along with many illustrative examples. Moreover, a census of some of the most general results on highly symmetric Steiner designs is given in a survey chapter. The monograph is addressed to graduate students in mathematics and computer science as well as established researchers in design theory, finite or incidence geometry, coding theory, cryptography, algebraic combinatorics, and more generally, discrete mathematics.

The last few years have witnessed rapid advancements in information and coding theory research and applications. This book provides a comprehensive guide to selected topics, both ongoing and emerging, in information and coding theory. Consisting of contributions from well-known and high-profile researchers in their respective specialties, topics that are covered include source coding; channel capacity; linear complexity; code construction, existence and analysis; bounds on codes and designs; space-time coding; LDPC codes; and codes and cryptography.All of the chapters are integrated in a manner that renders the book as a supplementary reference volume or textbook for use in both undergraduate and graduate courses on information and coding theory. As such, it will be a valuable text for students at both undergraduate and graduate levels as well as instructors, researchers, engineers, and practitioners in these fields.Supporting Powerpoint Slides are available upon request for all instructors who adopt this book as a course text.

This is the first volume of the second edition of the standard text on design theory.