Some results on generalized strong external difference families

Abstract

A generalized strong external difference family (briefly \((v, m; k_1,\dots ,k_m; \lambda _1,\dots ,\lambda _m)\)-GSEDF) was introduced by Paterson and Stinson in 2016. In this paper, we give some nonexistence results for GSEDFs. In particular, we prove that a \((v, 3;k_1,k_2,k_3; \lambda _1,\lambda _2,\lambda _3)\)-GSEDF does not exist when \(k_1+k_2+k_3 1\), \(t>1\) and \(v\equiv t\equiv 1\pmod 2\). Then we use it to obtain some new GSEDFs for \(m=2\). In particular, for any prime power q with \(q\equiv 1\pmod 4\), we show that there exists a \((qt, 2;(q-1)2^{n-1},\frac{qt-1}{2};(q-1)2^{n-2},(q-1)2^{n-2})\)-GSEDF, where \(t=p_1p_2\dots p_n\), \(p_i>1\), \(1\le i\le n\), \(p_1, p_2,\dots ,p_n\) are odd integers.