1. Introduction
Stopping sets and stopping set distribution of a linear code play an important role in analyzing the performance of the code under an iterative decoding algorithm over an erasure channel [
1,
2].
Let C be an linear code over with length n, dimension k, and minimum distance d, with H being an parity check matrix of C, i.e., for all codewords . Let S be a set of column indices of H. We say that S is a stopping set of C if the matrix, formed from H deleting those columns with indices not in S, does not have a row of weight one. The stopping set distribution is the sequence , with being the number of stopping sets of size i.
Recently, many researchers have studied the stopping sets and stopping set distribution [
1,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7], with a comprehensive review given in [
8]. The importance of studying stopping sets is that the performance of any linear code under iterative decoding on the binary erasure channel (BEC) is completely determined by stopping sets [
1]. Even though iterative decoding is best suited to codes defined by spare matrices (low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes), the algorithm itself can be applied to any linear code, including Hamming codes [
3], Reed–Muller codes [
9], the simplex and Hamming codes [
10], and algebraic geometry codes.
The study of stopping sets of algebraic geometry codes was first introduced by Zhang, Fu, and Wan [
11]. They studied algebraic geometry codes with a special parity check matrix
, whose rows are, precisely, the nonzero codewords of the dual code, and they used Riemann–Roch spaces to determine whether a set of column indices of
is a stopping set. They applied these results to the case of algebraic geometry codes from the rational function field corresponding to genus
(i.e., generalized Reed–Solomon codes) and algebraic geometry codes from the elliptic function field corresponding to genus
.
For Reed–Solomon codes (and MDS codes in general), the authors of [
11] gave a complete classification for stopping sets based on their cardinalities.
PropositionÂ
1([
11], Proposition 2)
.Â
Let C be an MDS code (i.e., the minimum distance equal to ) and be a set of column indices of . Then,- (a)Â
If , then S is a stopping set;
- (b)Â
If , then S is not a stopping set.
For algebraic geometry codes (AG codes) from an elliptic curve, the authors of [
11] gave a characterization of stopping sets based on the cardinality of the set, as well as the group structure of the set of rational points on an elliptic curve.
Anderson and Gretchen [
12] generalized the results of [
11] for general parity check matrix
H and they considered the stopping sets of the Hermitian codes. In the absence of a group structure on the points of the curve, they relied on the explicit bases for Riemann–Roch spaces and information on the Weierstrass semigroup.
Recently, Tenório and Tizziotti [
13] considered stopping sets of one-point and
m-point algebraic geometry codes defined by a certain family of curves,
, with a plane model of the form
, where many notable algebraic curves arise from this family, including the Hermitian curve, norm-trace curve, curves defined by the Kummer extension, etc. As in [
12], the authors of [
13] used the knowledge of the Weierstrass semigroup of
m-tuple of rational points on
determined in [
14] to study the stopping sets of these algebraic geometry codes arising from this family of curves,
.
In this paper, we consider stopping sets of one-point algebraic geometry codes defined by a hyperelliptic curve of genus
defined by the plane model
, where the degree of
is 5. Many papers were devoted to studying such curves; for example, in [
15], information about the curve is given for
and for the general hyperelliptic curve of genus
g in [
13]. In [
16], the authors gave an explicit way for determining a basis of the Riemann–Roch space
, for
’s are points on the curve distinct from the Weierstrass point at infinity
.
The choice for algebraic geometry code with is due to the fact that the properties of the underlying hyperelliptic curve are well known, for example, the ramified places, the canonical divisors, and the evaluation of functions at the rational divisors and their extensions.
We use the results in [
11,
12] to completely classify the stopping sets of the one-point algebraic geometric codes
defined by a hyperelliptic curve of genus 2 with
. For
, we prove in detail that all sets
of a size greater than 3 are stopping sets and we give an example of sets of size
that are not. For such codes, the same proof can also be extended to the case in which
. For
, we show that it needs to be studied case by case, as we prove that there exists a hyperelliptic curve of genus 2 with five rational places other than the point at infinity, which gives an algebraic geometry code that is not as strongly defined as
.
This paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 gives some background information on stopping sets and algebraic geometry codes. The main results on stopping sets from algebraic geometry codes defined by hyperelliptic curves of genus 2 are presented in
Section 3. In
Section 4, examples of such codes and stopping sets are presented and the conclusions are presented in
Section 5.
2. Stopping Sets of Algebraic Geometry Codes
Information about the stopping sets from algebraic geometry codes can be revealed from the structure of the underlying code; as in [
11], the dimension of Riemann–Roch spaces can be used to determine whether a set is a stopping set. In this section, we review the results in [
11,
12] regarding the stopping sets from algebraic geometry codes.
Let C be an -linear code over with a parity check matrix H (i.e., , for all ) and let . Given an matrix H and , the column restriction of H to S, denoted by , is the matrix formed from H by deleting those columns of H indexed by the elements of .
DefinitionÂ
1.A stopping set S of the code C with a parity check matrix H is a subset of , such that the column restriction of H to S does not contain a row of Hamming weight one.
RemarkÂ
1.The stopping set depends on both the code and the choice of the parity check matrix H of the code. The notation in [12] was adopted and we use to denote a code C with the parity check matrix H. Given a code
C, let
be a matrix formed by all the nonzero codewords of the dual code
as rows. The stopping sets of algebraic geometry codes
were studied by Zhang, Fu, and Wan [
11]. Anderson and Gretchen [
12] extended some of the results in [
11] to
, where
H is an arbitrary parity check matrix of
C. It turns out, as in the proposition below, that determining the stopping sets of
allows us to find the stopping sets of
, where
H is an arbitrary parity check matrix
C.
PropositionÂ
2([
12], Propostion 2.1)
.Â
If S is a stopping set of , then S is a stopping set of for any parity check matrix H of C. For algebraic geometry codes, we focus on the residue codes
. We review next some definitions and notations of algebraic geometry codes based on the exposition in [
15].
Let be a global function field of genus g. Let be the set of places of F. Given a divisor of F, set and the degree of A is given by . If is a nonzero function, we write , where denotes the principal divisor of the function f.
For two divisors A and , we write if for all places . We call a divisor A an effective divisor (positive divisor) if for all places . The support of a divisor A is supp.
The Riemann–Roch space of a divisor
A is
The dimension of
is denoted by
and satisfies the Riemann–Roch Theorem,
where K is a canonical divisor of degree . If , then we have
An algebraic geometry code (AG code), denoted by
, is constructed using two divisors,
G and
on
F with disjoint support and
are distinct rational places as follows:
where
Let
be the dual of the algebraic geometry code. A parity check matrix for
is a generator matrix for
and is of the form
where the set spans as an –vector space.
The following lemma ([
12], Lemma 2.2) plays an important role in determining the stopping sets of algebraic geometry codes.
LemmaÂ
1.Let be an algebraic geometry code of length n and let with parity check matrix H.
- 1.Â
Ifthen S is a stopping set of .
- 2.Â
If S is a stopping set of , then is not a row of H for any
Proof.Â
Let be a code of length n and with H being a parity check matrix of C.
Assume
and suppose is not a stopping set. Then, contains a row of weight one. Thus, there exists a function such that
so there exists such that and for all . This means that and for all . So, we have
which is equivalent to
for some and that is a contradiction.
Assume that
is a stopping set and
is a row of
H, where
for some , so we have both
thus, , which cannot be a row in H as S is a stopping set.
 □
We note here for the parity check matrix
, Lemma 1 will be reformulated as
The lemma above helps with determining whether a set is a stopping set based on the cardinality of a set as in the following proposition.
PropositionÂ
3([
12], Propotion 2.3)
.Â
Let be an algebraic geometry code of length n and let with parity check matrix H.- 1.Â
If , then S is a stopping set of ;
- 2.Â
If , then S is not a stopping set of for any parity check matrix H of C that has a row given by , where
Proof.Â
Assume
; hence,
and
so we have
hence, S is a stopping set by Lemma 1.
Assume
; we have
So, by the Riemann–Roch theorem,
so we have and the result follows from Lemma 1.
 □
RemarkÂ
2.In the special case of a parity check matrix , Proposition 3 will be given the following characterization:
- 1.Â
If , then S is not a stopping set;
- 2.Â
If , then S is a stopping set.
Many research papers classified the sets
S with cardinality between the two bounds, i.e.,
; for example, a complete classification was performed in [
11] for Reed–Solomon codes (
) and algebraic geometry codes constructed from elliptic curves (
). A classification based on the gap numbers and Weierstrass semigroup was carried out in [
12] for one-point Hermitian codes.
The following lemma, due to [
11], gives another description of the stopping sets of algebraic geometry codes
using a canonical divisor of the function field. Combining this result with Proposition 2 and Lemma 1 produces useful results on stopping sets for algebraic geometry codes
, for any parity check matrix
H. In this paper, we use this lemma to study stopping sets for one-point algebraic geometry codes defined by a hyperelliptic curve of genus 2.
LemmaÂ
2([
12], Lemma 2.4)
.Â
Assume and let be an algebraic geometry code with . Assume for all that there exists an effective divisor M with and a canonical divisor K such thatthen, S is a stopping set.
3. Stopping Sets of Algebraic Geometry Codes from Hyperelliptic Curve of Genus Two
In this section, we study the stopping sets of algebraic geometry codes defined by hyperelliptic curves of genus 2. Let
be a hyperelliptic curve defined over
by the plane model,
where is a square-free polynomial of degree with . In [15], the following information about this function field is presented:
The divisor is a canonical divisor with and ; hence, ;
Let
with
being an extension of
P; then, the ramification index
is given by
The places , which ramify in , are all the zeros of and the pole of x; hence, if decomposes into linear factors over , then exactly places of are ramified in (so the rest of the places of will split);
Let
be the decomposition of
into distinct irreducible monic polynomials and let
be the zero place of
and
be the pole of
x in
. Consider the extensions
of
; then, we have
Next, we apply the construction in [
13] for the one-point algebraic geometry codes constructed from the hyperelliptic curve of genus 2. Let
be the one-point algebraic geometry code. Since we are interested in strongly algebraic geometry codes, we have
, so we consider first the case with
.
PropositionÂ
4.The sets of a size greater than 3 of are stopping sets for any parity-check matrix H.
Proof.Â
For , by Proposition 3, S is a stopping set.
Let and . The idea of the proof is to construct a function h that satisfies the hypothesis of Lemma 2 with zeros P of h in S. We proceed as follows:
- (a)
If P is a zero for , then ;
- (b)
If P is not a zero for , we take , where the place lies below P in .
In this construction, we create a function h that has zeros in S and maybe more. In that case, we take to be a divisor consisting of the sum of the remaining places minus the poles at infinity and, since , M will be an effective divisor and satisfies the hypothesis of Lemma 2.
Now, we illustrate the idea above in the cases (a) and (b). We assume first that
S does not contain any zero places of
. Let
be the place that lies below
, which split in
F, so we have
and assume that is not in S with the same assumption for the rest of the places in S (assuming all places in S lie above a split place and the other split is not in S), we obtain that for the principal divisor of h is
If one was in S, we adjust M accordingly; hence, by Lemma 2, we conclude that S is a stopping set.
Now, the second case is when
is a zero of
lying above
, i.e.,
in that case, we take , where h is a product of , where is not a zero of . In that case,
which, again using 2, shows that S is a stopping set. □
RemarkÂ
3.The idea of the proof of Proposition 4 can be used to prove the same results for the case . However, for , we need to consider the underlying function fields; as we will see in Example 4, some hyperellitic curves have only five rational points other than the infinite place.
In Example 3 in
Section 4, we give an example of a set
S of size 3, which is not a stopping set. However, we can classify the stopping sets of size 3 as in the following lemma:
LemmaÂ
3.if S corresponds to three places in F that lie over three distinct places in , then S is a stopping set.
Proof.Â
Let
S be a set corresponding to the places
, where each
lies over
and those
are distinct. Now, we have
and if , then there exists a nonzero function h with , which means that both places are in support of h and, if these lie above different places in , then the principal divisor of h will contain and that means that the pole order (i.e., ) will exceed 3, which cannot be the case; thus, and, by Lemma 1, S is a stopping set. □