The Generating Idempotent Is a Minimum-Weight Codeword for Some Binary BCH Codes

In a paper from 2015, Ding et al. (IEEE Trans. IT, May 2015) conjectured that for odd $m$, the minimum distance of the binary BCH code of length $2^m-1$ and designed distance $2^{m-2}+1$ is equal to the Bose distance calculated in the same paper. In this paper, we prove the conjecture. In fact, we prove a stronger result suggested by Ding et al.: the weight of the generating idempotent is equal to the Bose distance for both odd and even $m$. Our main tools are some new properties of the so-called fibbinary integers, in particular, the splitting field of related polynomials, and the relation of these polynomials to the idempotent of the BCH code.