On the Existence and Nonexistence of Splitter Sets

In this paper, the existence of perfect and quasi-perfect splitter sets in finite abelian groups is studied, motivated by their application in coding theory for flash memory storage. For perfect splitter sets we view them as splittings of ${\mathbb{Z}}_n$, and using cyclotomic polynomials we derive a general condition for the existence of such splittings under certain circumstances. We further establish a relation between $B[-k,k](q)$ and $B[-(k-1),k+1](q)$ splitter sets, and give a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of perfect $B[-1,5](q)$ splitter sets. Finally, two nonexistence results for quasi-perfect splitter sets are presented.