Sophie Huczynska

Classical strong external difference families (SEDFs) are much-studied combinatorial structures motivated by information security applications; it is conjectured that only one classical abelian SEDF exists with more than two sets. Recently, non-disjoint SEDFs were introduced; it was shown that families of these exist with arbitrarily many sets. We present constructions for both classical and non-disjoint SEDFs, which encompass all known non-cyclotomic examples for either type (plus many new examples) using a sequence-based framework. Moreover, we introduce a range of new external difference structures (allowing set-sizes to vary, and sets to be replaced by multisets) in both the classical and non-disjoint case, and show how these may be applied to various communications applications.

Strong external difference families (SEDFs) are much-studied combinatorial objects motivated by an information security application. A well-known conjecture states that only one abelian SEDF with more than 2 sets exists. We show that if the disjointness condition is replaced by non-disjointness, then abelian SEDFs can be constructed with more than 2 sets (indeed any number of sets). We demonstrate that the non-disjoint analogue has striking differences to, and connections with, the classical SEDF and arises naturally via another coding application.

Classical strong external difference families (SEDFs) are much-studied combinatorial structures motivated by information security applications; it is conjectured that only one classical abelian SEDF exists with more than two sets. Recently, non-disjoint SEDFs were introduced; it was shown that families of these exist with arbitrarily many sets. We present constructions for both classical and non-disjoint SEDFs, which encompass all known non-cyclotomic examples for either type (plus many new examples) using a sequence-based framework. Moreover, we introduce a range of new external difference structures (allowing set-sizes to vary, and sets to be replaced by multisets) in both the classical and non-disjoint case, and show how these may be applied to various communications applications.

Strong external difference families (SEDFs) are much-studied combinatorial objects motivated by an information security application. A well-known conjecture states that only one abelian SEDF with more than 2 sets exists. We show that if the disjointness condition is replaced by non-disjointness, then abelian SEDFs can be constructed with more than 2 sets (indeed any number of sets). We demonstrate that the non-disjoint analogue has striking differences to, and connections with, the classical SEDF and arises naturally via another coding application.

Recently, new combinatorial structures called disjoint partial difference families (DPDFs) and external partial difference families (EPDFs) were introduced, which simultaneously generalize partial difference sets, disjoint difference families and external difference families, and have applications in information security. So far, all known construction methods have used cyclotomy in finite fields. We present the first non-cyclotomic infinite families of DPDFs which are also EPDFs, in structures other than finite fields (in particular cyclic groups and non-abelian groups). As well as direct constructions, we present an approach to constructing DPDFs/EPDFs using relative difference sets (RDSs); as part of this, we demonstrate how the well-known RDS result of Bose extends to a very natural construction for DPDFs and EPDFs.

We introduce the concept of a disjoint partial difference family (DPDF) and an external partial difference family (EPDF), a natural generalisation of the much-studied structures of disjoint difference family (DDF), external difference family (EDF) and partial difference set (PDS). We establish properties and constructions, and indicate connections to other recently-studied combinatorial structures. We show how DPDFs and EPDFs may be formed from collections of PDSs, and also present cyclotomic methods yielding DPDFs and EPDFs whose component sets are not in general PDSs. As part of this, we develop a unified framework encompassing various known constructions for cyclotomic difference structures, which also yields new results on DDFs and EDFs.

Strong external difference families (SEDFs) have applications to cryptography and are rich combinatorial structures in their own right. We extend the definition of SEDF from abelian groups to all finite groups, and introduce the concept of equivalence. We prove new recursive constructions for SEDFs and generalized SEDFs (GSEDFs) in cyclic groups, and present the first family of non-abelian SEDFs. We prove there exist at least two non-equivalent (k² + 1,2,k,1)-SEDFs for every k > 2, and begin the task of enumerating SEDFs, via a computational approach which yields complete results for all groups up to order 24.