On extending propelinear structures of the Nordstrom–Robinson code to the Hamming code

Abstract

A code is said to be propelinear if its automorphism group contains a subgroup which acts on the codewords regularly. Such a subgroup is called a propelinear structure on the code. With the aid of computer, we enumerate all propelinear structures on the Nordstrom–Robinson code and analyze the problem of extending them to propelinear structures on the extended Hamming code of length 16. The latter result is based on the description of partitions of the Hamming code of length 16 into Nordstrom–Robinson codes via Fano planes, presented in the paper. As a result, we obtain a record-breaking number of propelinear structures in the class of extended perfect codes of length 16.