A study of (xvt,xvt−1)-minihypers in PG(t,q)

We study (xvt,xvt−1)-minihypers in PG(t,q), i.e. minihypers with the same parameters as a weighted sum of x hyperplanes. We characterize these minihypers as a nonnegative rational sum of hyperplanes and we use this characterization to extend and improve the main results of several papers which have appeared on the special case t=2. We establish a new link with coding theory and we use this link to construct several new infinite classes of (xvt,xvt−1)-minihypers in PG(t,q) that cannot be written as an integer sum of hyperplanes.