Latin bitrades derived from groups

A latin bitrade is a pair of partial latin squares which are disjoint, occupy the same set of non-empty cells, and whose corresponding rows and columns contain the same set of entries. In ([9]) it is shown that a latin bitrade may be thought of as three derangements of the same set, whose product is the identity and whose cycles pairwise have at most one point in common. By letting a group act on itself by right translation, we show how some latin bitrades may be derived directly from ∗This work was supported by Australian Research Council Linkage International Award LX0453416 and institutional grant MSM0021620839 1 ar X iv :0 70 4. 17 30 v2 [ m at h. C O ] 8 M ar 2 00 8 groups. Properties of latin bitrades such as homogeneity, minimality (via thinness) and orthogonality may also be encoded succinctly within the group structure. We apply the construction to some wellknown groups, constructing previously unknown latin bitrades. In particular, we show the existence of minimal, k-homogeneous latin bitrades for each odd k ≥ 3. In some cases these are the smallest known such examples.