Special directions on the finite affine plane

Abstract

In this paper we study the number of special directions of sets of cardinality divisible by p on a finite plane of order p, where p is a prime. We show that there is no such a set with exactly two special directions. We characterise sets with exactly three special directions which answers a question of Ghidelli in negative. Further we introduce methods to construct sets of minimal cardinality that have exactly four special directions for small values of p.