English

On Euler's magic matrices of sizes $3$ and $8$

Combinatorics 2026-05-19 v2 Number Theory

Abstract

A proper Euler's magic matrix is an integer n×nn\times n matrix MZn×nM\in\mathbb Z^{n\times n} such that MMt=γIM\cdot M^t=\gamma\cdot I for some nonzero constant γ\gamma, the sum of the squares of the entries along each of the two main diagonals equals γ\gamma, and the squares of all entries in MM are pairwise distinct. Euler constructed such matrices for n=4n=4. In this work, we construct examples for n=8n=8 and prove that no such matrix exists for n=3n=3.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2504.16260,
  title  = {On Euler's magic matrices of sizes $3$ and $8$},
  author = {Peter Müller},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.16260},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

13 pages; enhanced arguments; some examples concerning the case $n=5$; to be published in Acta Arithmetica

R2 v1 2026-06-28T23:07:49.028Z