On balanced incomplete block designs with specified weak chromatic number

Daniel Horsley, David A. Pike

Published 2012-09-27, updated 2013-09-03Version 2

A weak $c$-colouring of a balanced incomplete block design (BIBD) is a colouring of the points of the design with $c$ colours in such a way that no block of the design has all of its vertices receive the same colour. A BIBD is said to be weakly $c$-chromatic if $c$ is the smallest number of colours with which the design can be weakly coloured. In this paper we show that for all $c \geq 2$ and $k \geq 3$ with $(c,k) \neq (2,3)$, the obvious necessary conditions for the existence of a $(v,k,\lambda)$-BIBD are asymptotically sufficient for the existence of a weakly $c$-chromatic $(v,k,\lambda)$-BIBD.