Configurations of higher orders

Abstract

This paper begins by extending the notion of a combinatorial configuration of points and lines to a combinatorial configuration of points and planes that we refer to as configurations of order $2$. We then proceed to investigate a further extension to the notion of points and $k$-planes ($k$-dimensional hyperplanes) which we refer to as configurations of order $k$. We present a number of general examples such as stacked configurations of order $k$ - intuitively layering lower order configurations - and product configurations of order $k$. We discuss many analogues of standard configurations such as dual configurations, isomorphisms, graphical representations, and when a configuration is geometric. We focus mostly on configurations of order $2$ and specifically compute the number of possible symmetric configurations of order $2$ when each plane contains $3$ points for small values on $n$ - the total number of points in the configuration.