English

On the S-matrix conjecture

Functional Analysis 2013-12-10 v2

Abstract

Motivated with a problem in spectroscopy, Sloane and Harwit conjectured in 1976 what is the minimal Frobenius norm of the inverse of a matrix having all entries from the interval [0, 1]. In 1987, Cheng proved their conjecture in the case of odd dimensions, while for even dimensions he obtained a slightly weaker lower bound for the norm. His proof is based on the Kiefer-Wolfowitz equivalence theorem from the approximate theory of optimal design. In this note we give a short and simple proof of his result.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1306.6786,
  title  = {On the S-matrix conjecture},
  author = {Roman Drnovšek},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1306.6786},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

minor changes; to appear in Linear Algebra and its Applications

R2 v1 2026-06-22T00:42:14.156Z