Some bounds arising from a polynomial ideal associated to any $t$-design

Abstract

We consider ordered pairs $(X,\mathcal{B})$ where $X$ is a finite set of size $v$ and $\mathcal{B}$ is some collection 
 of $k$-element subsets of $X$ such that every $t$-element subset of $X$ is contained in exactly $\lambda$
 ``blocks'' $B\in \mathcal{B}$ for some fixed $\lambda$. We represent each block $B$ by a zero-one vector $\bc_B$ of
 length $v$ and explore the ideal $\mathcal{I}(\mathcal{B})$ of polynomials in $v$ variables with complex coefficients which vanish on
 the set $\{ \bc_B \mid B \in \mathcal{B}\}$. After setting up the basic theory, we investigate two parameters related to
 this ideal: $\gamma_1(\mathcal{B})$ is the smallest degree of a non-trivial polynomial in the ideal $\mathcal{I}(\mathcal{B})$ 
 and $\gamma_2(\mathcal{B})$ is the smallest integer $s$ such that $\mathcal{I}(\mathcal{B})$ is generated by a set of polynomials 
 of degree at most $s$. We first prove the general bounds $t/2 < \gamma_1(\mathcal{B}) \le \gamma_2(\mathcal{B}) \le k$. 
 Examining important families of examples, we find that, for symmetric 2-designs and
 Steiner systems, we have $\gamma_2(\mathcal{B}) \le t$. But we expect $\gamma_2(\mathcal{B})$
 to be closer to $k$ for less structured designs and we indicate this by constructing infinitely many 
 triple systems satisfying $\gamma_2(\mathcal{B})=k$.