Additive Steiner triple systems

Abstract

A Steiner triple system is additive if it can be embedded in a commutative group in such a way that the sum of the three points in any given block is zero. In this paper we show that a Steiner triple system is additive if and only if it is the point-line design of either a projective space PG(d,2) over GF(2) or an affine space AG(d,3) over GF(3), for d ≥ 1. Our proof is based on algebraic arguments and on the combinatorial characterization of finite projective geometries in terms of Veblen points.