Arcs in finite projective spaces

Abstract

This is an expository article detailing results concerning large arcs in finite projective spaces. It is not strictly a survey but attempts to cover the most relevant results on arcs, simplifying and unifying proofs of known old and more recent theorems. The article is mostly self-contained and includes a proof of the most general form of Segre’s lemma of tangents and a short proof of the MDS conjecture over prime fields based on this lemma.