Difference Sets with Few Character Values

Abstract

The known families of difference sets can be subdivided into three classes: difference sets with Singer parameters, cyclotomic difference sets, and difference sets with gcd$(v,n)>1$. It is remarkable that all the known difference sets with gcd$(v,n)>1$ have the so-called character divisibility property. In 1997, Jungnickel and Schmidt posed the problem of constructing difference sets with gcd$(v,n)>1$ that do not satisfy this property. In an attempt to attack this problem, we use difference sets with three nontrivial character values as candidates, and get some necessary conditions.