Related papers: Signed magic arrays: existence and constructions

A real symmetric matrix $M$ is completely positive semidefinite if it admits a Gram representation by (Hermitian) positive semidefinite matrices of any size $d$. The smallest such $d$ is called the (complex) completely positive semidefinite…

An ordered matching of size $n$ is a graph on a linearly ordered vertex set $V$, $|V|=2n$, consisting of $n$ pairwise disjoint edges. There are three different ordered matchings of size two on $V=\{1,2,3,4\}$: an alignment…

Orthogonal designs and weighing matrices have many applications in areas such as coding theory, cryptography, wireless networking and communication. In this paper, we first show that if positive integer $k$ cannot be written as the sum of…

A complete mapping of a group $\Gamma$ is a bijection $\varphi\colon \Gamma\to \Gamma$ for which the mapping $x \mapsto x+\varphi(x)$ is a bijection. In this paper we consider the existence of a complete mapping $\varphi$ of $\Gamma$ and a…

In this paper we show that for every positive integer $n$ there exists a prime number in the interval $[n,9(n+3)/8]$. Based on this result, we prove that if $a$ is an integer greater than 1, then for every integer $n>14.4a$ there are at…

In this note, we show that if $N$ is an odd perfect number and $q^{\alpha}$ is some prime power exactly dividing it, then $\sigma(N/q^{\alpha})/q^{\alpha}>5$. In general, we also show that if $\sigma(N/q^{\alpha})/q^{\alpha}<K$, where $K$…

Given non-negative integers $v, m, n, \alpha, \beta$, the Hamilton-Waterloo problem asks for a factorization of the complete graph $K_v$ into $\alpha$ $C_m$-factors and $\beta$ $C_n$-factors. Clearly, $v$ odd, $n,m\geq 3$, $m\mid v$, $n\mid…

We call $n$ a spoof odd perfect number if $n$ is odd and $n=km$ for two integers $k,m>1$ such that $\sigma(k)(m+1)=2n$, where $\sigma$ is the sum-of-divisors function. In this paper, we show how results analogous to those of odd perfect…

A Heffter array $H(m,n;s,t)$ is an $m \times n$ matrix with nonzero entries from $\mathbb{Z}_{2ms+1}$ such that $i)$ each row contains $s$ filled cells and each column contains $t$ filled cells, $ii)$ every row and column sum to 0, and…

Let $s(n)$ be the minimum number of edges in a graph that contains every $n$-vertex tree as a subgraph. Chung and Graham [J. London Math. Soc. 1983] claim to prove that $s(n)\leqslant O(n\log n)$. We point out a mistake in their proof. The…

Hadamard matrices are $(-1, +1)$ square matrices with mutually orthogonal rows. The Hadamard conjecture states that Hadamard matrices of order $n$ exist whenever $n$ is $1$, $2$, or a multiple of $4$. However, no construction is known that…

Let $ k, m, n $ be positive integers with $ k \geq 2 $. A $ k $-multiset of $ [n]_m $ is a collection of $ k $ integers from the set $ \{1, 2, \ldots, n\} $ in which the integers can appear more than once but at most $ m $ times. A family…

A covering array CA(N; t; k; v) is an N x k array on v symbols such that every N x t subarray contains as a row each t-tuple over the v symbols at least once. The minimum N for which a CA(N; t; k; v) exists is called the covering array…

Let $n,s,$ and $k$ be positive integers such that $k\geq 3$, $s\geq 3$ and $n\geq ks$. An $s$-matching $M_s$ in a $k$-uniform hypergraph is a set of $s$ pairwise disjoint edges. The anti-Ramsey number $\textrm{ar}(n,k,M_s)$ of an…

A $(v,k,\lambda)$ difference set in a group $G$ of order $v$ is a subset $\{d_1, d_2, \ldots,d_k\}$ of $G$ such that $D=\sum d_i$ in the group ring $\mathbb{Z}[G]$ satisfies $$D D^{-1} = n + \lambda G,$$ where $n=k-\lambda$. If $D=\sum s_i…

An \itbf{indeterminate string} (or, more simply, just a \itbf{string}) $\s{x} = \s{x}[1..n]$ on an alphabet $\Sigma$ is a sequence of nonempty subsets of $\Sigma$. We say that $\s{x}[i_1]$ and $\s{x}[i_2]$ \itbf{match} (written $\s{x}[i_1]…

Some new results concerning the equation $\sigma(N)=aM, \sigma(M)=bN$ are proved. As a corollary, there are only finitely many odd superperfect numbers with a fixed number of distinct prime factors.

Given integers $a_1, a_2, ..., a_n$, with $a_1 + a_2 + ... + a_n \geq 1$, a symmetrically constrained composition $\lambda_1 + lambda_2 + ... + lambda_n = M$ of $M$ into $n$ nonnegative parts is one that satisfies each of the the $n!$…

We construct sequences $\{a_n\}_{n\in\mathbb{N}}\in\{-1,1\}^{\mathbb{N}}$ with small values of signed harmonic sums \[ \sum_{n\in\mathcal{A}\cap[1,N]}\frac{a_n}{n}, \] for any reasonably dense subsets $\mathcal{A}\subset\mathbb{N}.$ We…

Let $f(n,k)$ be the largest number of positive integers not exceeding $n$ from which one cannot select $k+1$ pairwise coprime integers, and let $E(n,k)$ be the set of positive integers which do not exceed $n$ and can be divided by at least…