Quasigroups and tactical systems

Abstract

A quasigroupQ is a set together with a binary operation which satisfies the condition that any two elements of the equationxy =z uniquely determines the third. A quasigroup is in indempotent when any elementx satisfies the indentityxx =x. Several types of Tactical Systems are defined as arrangement of points into “blocks” in such a way as to balance the incidence of (ordered or unordered) pairs of points, and shown to be coexistent with idempotent quasigroups satisfying certain identifies. In particular the correspondences given are: 1. totally symmetric idempotent quasigroups and Steiner triple systems, 2. semi-symmetric idempotent quasigroups and directed triple systems, 3. idempotent quasigroups satisfying Schröder's Second Law, namely (xy)(yx)=x, and triple tourna-ments, and 4. idempotent quasigroups satisfying Stein's Third Law, namely (xy)(yx)=y, and directed tournaments. These correspondences are used to obtain corollaries on the existence of such quasig-roups from constructions of the Tactical Systems. In particular this provides a counterexample to an ”almost conjecture“ of Norton and Stein (1956) concerning the existence of those quasigroups in 3 and 4 above. Indeed no idempotent qnasigroups satisfying Stein's Third Law and with order divisible by four were known to N. S. Mendelsohn when he wrote a paper on such quasigroups for the Third Waterloo Conference on Combinatorics (May, 1968). Finally, a construction for triple tournaments is interpreted as a Generalized Semi-Direct Product of idempotent quasigroups.