Universal bounds for spherical codes: the Levenshtein framework lifted

Based on the Delsarte-Yudin linear programming approach, we extend Levenshtein's framework to obtain lower bounds for the minimum $h$-energy of spherical codes of prescribed dimension and cardinality, and upper bounds on the maximal cardinality of spherical codes of prescribed dimension and minimum separation. These bounds are universal in the sense that they hold for a large class of potentials $h$ and in the sense of Levenshtein. Moreover, codes attaining the bounds are universally optimal in the sense of Cohn-Kumar. Referring to Levenshtein bounds and the energy bounds of the authors as ``first level", our results can be considered as ``next level" universal bounds as they have the same general nature and imply necessary and sufficient conditions for their local and global optimality. For this purpose, we introduce the notion of Universal Lower Bound space (ULB-space), a space that satisfies certain quadrature and interpolation properties. While there are numerous cases for which our method applies, we will emphasize the model examples of $24$ points ($24$-cell) and $120$ points ($600$-cell) on $\mathbb{S}^3$. In particular, we provide a new proof that the $600$-cell is universally optimal, and in so doing, we derive optimality of the $600$-cell on a class larger than the absolutely monotone potentials considered by Cohn-Kumar.