English

Goethals--Seidel difference families with symmetric or skew base blocks

Combinatorics 2024-01-23 v1

Abstract

We single out a class of difference families which is widely used in some constructions of Hadamard matrices and which we call Goethals--Seidel (GS) difference families. They consist of four subsets (base blocks) of a finite abelian group of order vv, which can be used to construct Hadamard matrices via the well-known Goethals--Seidel array. We consider the special class of these families in cyclic groups, where each base block is either symmetric or skew. We omit the well-known case where all four blocks are symmetric. By extending previous computations by several authors, we complete the classification of GS-difference families of this type for odd v<50v<50. In particular, we have constructed the first examples of so called good matrices, G-matrices and best matrices of order 43, and good matrices and G-matrices of order 45. We also point out some errors in one of the cited references.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1802.00556,
  title  = {Goethals--Seidel difference families with symmetric or skew base blocks},
  author = {Dragomir Z. Djokovic and Ilias S. Kotsireas},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1802.00556},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

19 pages, including the appendix with a long list of difference families (about 8 pages)