Transversals, near transversals, and diagonals in iterated groups and quasigroups

Abstract

Given a binary quasigroup $G$ of order $n$, a $d$-iterated quasigroup $G[d]$ is the $(d+1)$-ary quasigroup equal to the $d$-times composition of $G$ with itself. The Cayley table of every $d$-ary quasigroup is a $d$-dimensional latin hypercube. Transversals and diagonals in multiary quasigroups are defined so as to coincide with those in the corresponding latin hypercube. We prove that if a group $G$ of order $n$ satisfies the Hall--Paige condition, then the number of transversals in $G[d]$ is equal to $\frac{n!}{|G^{\prime }|n^{n-1}}\cdot n{!}^d(1+o(1))$ for large $d$, where $G^{\prime }$ is the commutator subgroup of $G$. For a general quasigroup $G$, we obtain similar estimations on the numbers of transversals and near transversals in $G[d]$ and develop a method for counting diagonals of other types in iterated quasigroups.

arXiv commentMinor corrections, accepted version