Combinatorial designs, difference sets and bent functions as perfect colorings of graphs and multigraphs

Abstract

It is proved that 1) the indicator function of some onefold or multifold independent set in a regular graph is a perfect coloring if and only if the set attain the Delsarte--Hoffman bound; 2) each transversal in a uniform regular hypergraph is an independent set attaining the Delsarte--Hoffman bound in the vertex adjacency multigraph of this hypergraph; 3) combinatorial designs with parameters $t$-$(v,k,\lambda )$ and similar $q$-designs, difference sets, Hadamard matrices, and bent functions are equivalent to perfect colorings of special graphs and multigraphs, in particular, it is true in the cases of the Johnson graphs $J(n,k)$ for $(k-1)$-$(v,k,\lambda )$ designs and the Grassmann graphs $J_2(n,2)$ for bent functions. Keywords: perfect coloring, equitable partition, transversal of hypergraph, combinatorial design, $q$-design, difference set, bent function, Johnson graph, Grassmann graph, Delsarte--Hoffman bound

This is improved version of the paper published in Siberian Mathematical Journal. We fix some misprints and a gap in the proof of Theorem 2