Cyclic codes and cyclically covering subspaces

Abstract

A subspace of $\mathbb{F}_q^n$ is called cyclically covering if the union of $\sigma^i(U)$ can cover the whole space $\mathbb{F}_q^n$, where $\sigma$ is the cyclic shift, $0 \leqslant i \leqslant n-1$. Let $h_q(n)$ be the largest possible co-dimension of a cyclically covering subspace of $\mathbb{F}_q^n$. We show that $h_2(2p) = 2$ for every prime $p$ such that $2$ is a primitive root modulo $p$. By constacyclic codes, we show that $h_q((q-1)n) = 0$ when $h_q(n) = 0$ and $\gcd(n,q-1) = 1$. We also derive a lower bound on $h_q(n)$ by the concept of support weight distribution, which is important in coding theory. Finally, using irreducible cyclic codes, we present several families of $n$ such that $h_q(n) = 0$.