Relative Difference Sets and Hadamard Matrices from Perfect Quaternionic Arrays

Let \(G=\mathbf{C}_{n_1}\times \cdots \times \mathbf{C}_{n_m}\) be an abelian group of order \(n=n_1\dots n_m\), where each \(\mathbf{C}_{n_t}\) is cyclic of order \(n_t\). We present a correspondence between the (4n, 2, 4n, 2n)-relative difference sets in \(G\times Q_8\) relative to the centre \(Z(Q_8)\) and the perfect arrays of size \(n_1\times \dots \times n_m\) over the quaternionic alphabet \(Q_8\cup qQ_8\), where \(q=(1+i+j+k)/2\). In view of this connection, for \(m=2\) we introduce new families of relative difference sets in \(G\times Q_8\), as well as new families of Williamson and Ito Hadamard matrices with G-invariant components.     

Hermitian rank distance codes

Let \(X=X(n,q)\) be the set of \(n\times n\) Hermitian matrices over \(\mathbb {F}_{q^2}\). It is well known that X gives rise to a metric translation association scheme whose classes are induced by the rank metric. We study d-codes in this scheme, namely subsets Y of X with the property that, for all distinct \(A,B\in Y\), the rank of \(A-B\) is at least d. We prove bounds on the size of a d-code and show that, under certain conditions, the inner distribution of a d-code is determined by its parameters. Except if n and d are both even and \(4\le d\le n-2\), constructions of d-codes are given, which are optimal among the d-codes that are subgroups of \((X,+)\). This work complements results previously obtained for several other types of matrices over finite fields.     

Lengths of words in transformation semigroups generated by digraphs

Given a simple digraph D on n vertices (with \(n\ge 2\)), there is a natural construction of a semigroup of transformations \(\langle D\rangle \). For any edge (a, b) of D, let \(a\rightarrow b\) be the idempotent of rank \(n-1\) mapping a to b and fixing all vertices other than a; then, define \(\langle D\rangle \) to be the semigroup generated by \(a \rightarrow b\) for all \((a,b) \in E(D)\). For \(\alpha \in \langle D\rangle \), let \(\ell (D,\alpha )\) be the minimal length of a word in E(D) expressing \(\alpha \). It is well known that the semigroup \(\mathrm {Sing}_n\) of all transformations of rank at most \(n-1\) is generated by its idempotents of rank \(n-1\). When \(D=K_n\) is the complete undirected graph, Howie and Iwahori, independently, obtained a formula to calculate \(\ell (K_n,\alpha )\), for any \(\alpha \in \langle K_n\rangle = \mathrm {Sing}_n\); however, no analogous non-trivial results are known when \(D \ne K_n\). In this paper, we characterise all simple digraphs D such that either \(\ell (D,\alpha )\) is equal to Howie–Iwahori’s formula for all \(\alpha \in \langle D\rangle \), or \(\ell (D,\alpha ) = n - \mathrm {fix}(\alpha )\) for all \(\alpha \in \langle D\rangle \), or \(\ell (D,\alpha ) = n - \mathrm {rk}(\alpha )\) for all \(\alpha \in \langle D\rangle \). We also obtain bounds for \(\ell (D,\alpha )\) when D is an acyclic digraph or a strong tournament (the latter case corresponds to a smallest generating set of idempotents of rank \(n-1\) of \(\mathrm {Sing}_n\)). We finish the paper with a list of conjectures and open problems.     

Derivations Vanishing Identities Involving Generalized Derivations and Multilinear Polynomial in Prime Rings

Let R be a prime ring of characteristic different from 2 with Utumi quotient ring U and extended centroid C, \(f(x_1,\ldots ,x_n)\) be a multilinear polynomial over C, which is not central valued on R. Suppose that d is a non-zero derivation of R, F and G are two generalized derivations of R such that \(d\{F(u)u-uG^2(u)\}=0\) for all \(u\in f(R)\). Then one of the following holds:

1. (i)
   there exist \(a, b, p\in U\), \(\lambda \in C\) such that \(F(x)=\lambda x+bx+xa^2\), \(G(x)=ax\), \(d(x)=[p, x]\) for all \(x\in R\) with \([p, b]=0\) and \(f(x_1,\ldots , x_n)^2\) is central valued on R;
    
2. (ii)
   there exist \(a, b, p\in U\) such that \(F(x)=ax\), \(G(x)=xb\), \(d(x)=[p,x]\) for all \(x\in R\) and \(f(x_1,\ldots , x_n)^2\) is central valued on R with \([p, a-b^2]=0\);
    
3. (iii)
   there exist \(a\in U\) such that \(F(x)=xa^2\) and \(G(x)=ax\) for all \(x\in R\);
    
4. (iv)
   there exists \(a\in U\) such that \(F(x)=a^2x\) and \(G(x)=xa\) for all \(x\in R\) with \(a^2\in C\);
    
5. (v)
   there exist \(a, p\in U\), \(\lambda , \alpha , \mu \in C\) such that \(F(x)=\lambda x-a^2x\), \(G(x)=xa\) and \(d(x)=[p,x]\) for all \(x\in R\) with \(a^2=\mu -\alpha p\) and \(\alpha p^2+(\lambda -2\mu ) p\in C\);
    
6. (vi)
   there exist \(a\in U\), \(\lambda \in C\) such that R satisfies \(s_4\) and either \(F(x)=\lambda x+xa^2\), \(G(x)=ax\) or \(F(x)=\lambda x-a^2x\), \(G(x)=xa\) for all \(x\in R\).
    

     

Monochromatic Solutions for Multi-Term Unknowns

Given integers \(k\ge 2\), \(n \ge 2\), \(m \ge 2\) and \( a_1,a_2,\ldots ,a_m \in {\mathbb {Z}}{\backslash }{\{0\}}\), and let \(f(z)= \sum _{j=0}^{n}c_jz^j\) be a polynomial of integer coefficients with \(c_n>0\) and \((\sum _{i=1}^ma_i)|f(z)\) for some integer z. For a k-coloring of \([N]=\{1,2,\ldots ,N\}\), we say that there is a monochromatic solution of the equation \(a_1x_1+a_2x_2+\cdots +a_mx_m=f(z)\) if there exist pairwise distinct \(x_1,x_2,\ldots ,x_m\in [N]\) all of the same color such that the equation holds for some \(z\in \mathbb {Z}\). Problems of this type are often referred to as Ramsey-type problems. In this paper, it is shown that if \(a_i>0\) for \(1\le i\le m\), then there exists an integer \(N_0=N(k,m,n)\) such that for \(N\ge N_0\), each k-coloring of [N] contains a monochromatic solution \(x_1,x_2,\ldots ,x_m\) of the equation \(a_1x_1+a_2x_2+ \cdots +a_mx_m= f(z)\). Moreover, if n is odd and there are \(a_i\) and \(a_j\) such that \(a_ia_j<0\) for some \(1 \le i\ne j\le m\), then the assertion holds similarly.     

Skew <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>-derivation on prime and semi prime rings

Let \(n \ge 2\) be a fixed integer, R be a noncommutative n!-torsion free ring and I be any non zero ideal of R. In this paper we have proved the following results; (i) If R is a prime ring and there exists a symmetric skew n-derivation \(D: R^n \rightarrow R\) associated with the automorphism \(\sigma \) on R,  such that the trace function \(\delta : R \rightarrow R \) of D satisfies \([\delta (x), \sigma (x)] =0\), for all \(x\in I,\) then \(D=0;\,\)(ii) If R is a semi prime ring and the trace function \(\delta ,\) commuting on I,  satisfies \([\delta (x), \sigma (x)]\in Z\), for all \(x \in I,\) then \([\delta (x), \sigma (x)] = 0 \), for all \(x \in I.\) Moreover, we have proved some annihilating conditions for algebraic identity involving multiplicative(generalized) derivation.     

Strong extensions for q-summing o perators acting in p-convex Banach function s paces for $$1 \le p \le q$$1≤ p≤ q

Let \(1\le p\le q<\infty \) and let X be a p-convex Banach function space over a \(\sigma \)-finite measure \(\mu \). We combine the structure of the spaces \(L^p(\mu )\) and \(L^q(\xi )\) for constructing the new space \(S_{X_p}^{\,q}(\xi )\), where \(\xi \) is a probability Radon measure on a certain compact set associated to X. We show some of its properties, and the relevant fact that every q-summing operator T defined on X can be continuously (strongly) extended to \(S_{X_p}^{\,q}(\xi )\). Our arguments lead to a mixture of the Pietsch and Maurey-Rosenthal factorization theorems, which provided the known (strong) factorizations for q-summing operators through \(L^q\)-spaces when \(1 \le q \le p\). Thus, our result completes the picture, showing what happens in the complementary case \(1\le p\le q\).     

Extension of the Set of Complex Hadamard Matrices of Size 8

A complex Hadamard matrix is defined as a matrix H which fulfills two conditions, \(|H_{j,k}|=1\) for all j and k and \(HH^{*}=N \mathbb {I}_N\) where \(\mathbb {I}_N\) is an identity matrix of size N. We explore the set of complex Hadamard matrices \(\mathcal {H}_N\) of size \(N=8\) and present two previously unknown structures: a one-parametric, non-affine family \(T_8^{(1)}\) of complex Hadamard matrices and a single symmetric and isolated matrix \(A_8^{(0)}\).     

On the number of monic integer polynomials with given signature

In this paper, we show that the number of monic integer polynomials of degree \(d \ge 1\) and height at most H which have no real roots is between \(c_1H^{d-1/2}\) and \(c_2 H^{d-1/2}\), where the constants \(c_2>c_1>0\) depend only on d. (Of course, this situation may only occur for d even.) Furthermore, for each integer s satisfying \(0 \le s < d/2\) we show that the number of monic integer polynomials of degree d and height at most H which have precisely 2s non-real roots is asymptotic to \(\lambda (d,s)H^{d}\) as \(H \rightarrow \infty \). The constants \(\lambda (d,s)\) are all positive and come from a recent paper of Bertók, Hajdu, and Peth?. They considered a similar question for general (not necessarily monic) integer polynomials and posed this as an open question.     

Quantum MDS codes with relatively large minimum distance from Hermitian self-orthogonal codes

It has become common knowledge that constructing q-ary quantum MDS codes with minimum distance bigger than \(q/2+1\) is significantly more difficult than constructing those with minimum distance less than or equal to \(q/2+1\). Despite of various constructions of q-ary quantum MDS codes, all known q-ary quantum MDS codes have minimum distance bounded by \(q/2+1\) except for some lengths. The purpose of the current paper is to provide some new q-ary quantum MDS codes with minimum distance bigger than \(q/2+1\). In this paper, we provide several classes of quantum MDS codes with minimum distance bigger than \(q/2+1\). For instance, some examples in these classes include q-ary \([n,n-2k, k+1]\)-quantum MDS codes for cases: (i) \(q\equiv -1\bmod {5}, n=(q^2+4)/5\) and \(1\le k\le (3q-2)/5\); (ii) \(q\equiv -1\bmod {7}, n=(q^2+6)/7\) and \(1\le k\le (4q-3)/7\); (iii) \(2|q, q\equiv -1\bmod {3}, n=2(q^2-1)/3\) and \(1\le k\le (2q-1)/3\); and (iv) \(2|q, q\equiv -1\bmod {5}, n=2(q^2-1)/5\) and \(1\le k\le (3q-2)/5\).     

Tightness and Convergence of Trimmed Lévy Processes to Normality at Small Times

For nonnegative integers r, s, let \(^{(r,s)}X_t\) be the Lévy process \(X_t\) with the r largest positive jumps and the s smallest negative jumps up till time t deleted, and let \(^{(r)}\widetilde{X}_t\) be \(X_t\) with the r largest jumps in modulus up till time t deleted. Let \(a_t \in \mathbb {R}\) and \(b_t>0\) be non-stochastic functions in t. We show that the tightness of \(({}^{(r,s)}X_t - a_t)/b_t\) or \(({}^{(r)}{\widetilde{X}}_t - a_t)/b_t\) as \(t\downarrow 0\) implies the tightness of all normed ordered jumps, and hence the tightness of the untrimmed process \((X_t -a_t)/b_t\) at 0. We use this to deduce that the trimmed process \(({}^{(r,s)}X_t - a_t)/b_t\) or \(({}^{(r)}{\widetilde{X}}_t - a_t)/b_t\) converges to N(0, 1) or to a degenerate distribution as \(t\downarrow 0\) if and only if \((X_t-a_t)/b_t \) converges to N(0, 1) or to the same degenerate distribution, as \(t \downarrow 0\).     

Approximation of entire functions of exponential type by exponential sums<Superscript>*</Superscript>

Let K be a compact set in \( {{\mathbb R}^n} \). For \( 1 \leqslant p \leqslant \infty \), the Bernstein space \( B_K^p \) is the Banach space of all functions \( f \in {L^p}\left( {{{\mathbb R}^n}} \right) \)such that their Fourier transform in a distributional sense is supported on K. If \( f \in B_K^p \), then f is continuous on \( {{\mathbb R}^n} \) and has an extension onto the complex space \( {{\mathbb C}^n} \) to an entire function of exponential type K. We study the approximation of functions in \( B_K^p \) by finite τ -periodic exponential sums of the form

$ \sum\limits_m {{c_m}{e^{2\pi {\text{i}}\left( {x,m} \right)/\tau }}} $

in the \( {L^p}\left( {\tau {{\left[ { - 1/2,1/2} \right]}^n}} \right) \)-norm as τ → ∞ when K is a polytope in \( {{\mathbb R}^n} \).

     

CCZ equivalence of power functions

Let \(F\simeq {{\mathrm{GF}}}(p^n)\) be a finite field of characteristic p and \(p_k\) and \(p_\ell \) be power functions on F defined by \(p_k(x)=x^k\) and \(p_\ell (x)=x^\ell \) respectively. We show, that \(p_k\) and \(p_\ell \) are CCZ equivalent, if and only if there exists a positive integer \(0\le a< n\), such that \(\ell \equiv p^a k \pmod {p^n-1}\) or \(k\ell \equiv p^a \pmod {p^n-1}\).     

Newly appointed editors

Let k be a field and \(k(x_0,\ldots ,x_{p-1})\) be the rational function field of p variables over k where p is a prime number. Suppose that \(G=\langle \sigma \rangle \simeq C_p\) acts on \(k(x_0,\ldots ,x_{p-1})\) by k-automorphisms defined as \(\sigma :x_0\mapsto x_1\mapsto \cdots \mapsto x_{p-1}\mapsto x_0\). Denote by P the set of all prime numbers and define \(P_0=\{p\in P:\mathbb {Q}(\zeta _{p-1})\) is of class number one\(\}\) where \(\zeta _n\) a primitive n-th root of unity in \(\mathbb {C}\) for a positive integer n; \(P_0\) is a finite set by Masley and Montgomery (J Reine Angew Math 286/287:248–256, 1976). Theorem. Let k be an algebraic number field and \(P_k=\{p\in P: p\) is ramified in \(k\}\). Then \(k(x_0,\ldots ,x_{p-1})^G\) is not stably rational over k for all \(p\in P\backslash (P_0\cup P_k)\).     

Cliques in $$C_4$$-free graphs of large minimum degree

A graph G is called \(C_4\)-free if it does not contain the cycle \(C_4\) as an induced subgraph. Hubenko, Solymosi and the first author proved (answering a question of Erd?s) a peculiar property of \(C_4\)-free graphs: \(C_4\)-free graphs with n vertices and average degree at least cn contain a complete subgraph (clique) of size at least \(c'n\) (with \(c'= 0.1c^2\)). We prove here better bounds \(\big ({c^2n\over 2+c}\) in general and \((c-1/3)n\) when \( c \le 0.733\big )\) from the stronger assumption that the \(C_4\)-free graphs have minimum degree at least cn. Our main result is a theorem for regular graphs, conjectured in the paper mentioned above: 2k-regular \(C_4\)-free graphs on \(4k+1\) vertices contain a clique of size \(k+1\). This is the best possible as shown by the kth power of the cycle \(C_{4k+1}\).     

Forcing Posets with Large Dimension to Contain Large Standard Examples

The dimension of a poset P, denoted \(\dim (P)\), is the least positive integer d for which P is the intersection of d linear extensions of P. The maximum dimension of a poset P with \(|P|\le 2n+1\) is n, provided \(n\ge 2\), and this inequality is tight when P contains the standard example \(S_n\). However, there are posets with large dimension that do not contain the standard example \(S_2\). Moreover, for each fixed \(d\ge 2\), if P is a poset with \(|P|\le 2n+1\) and P does not contain the standard example \(S_d\), then \(\dim (P)=o(n)\). Also, for large n, there is a poset P with \(|P|=2n\) and \(\dim (P)\ge (1-o(1))n\) such that the largest d so that P contains the standard example \(S_d\) is o(n). In this paper, we will show that for every integer \(c\ge 1\), there is an integer \(f(c)=O(c^2)\) so that for large enough n, if P is a poset with \(|P|\le 2n+1\) and \(\dim (P)\ge n-c\), then P contains a standard example \(S_d\) with \(d\ge n-f(c)\). From below, we show that \(f(c)={\varOmega }(c^{4/3})\). On the other hand, we also prove an analogous result for fractional dimension, and in this setting f(c) is linear in c. Here the result is best possible up to the value of the multiplicative constant.     

Semidefinite bounds for nonbinary codes based on quadruples

For nonnegative integers q, n, d, let \(A_q(n,d)\) denote the maximum cardinality of a code of length n over an alphabet [q] with q letters and with minimum distance at least d. We consider the following upper bound on \(A_q(n,d)\). For any k, let \(\mathcal{C}_k\) be the collection of codes of cardinality at most k. Then \(A_q(n,d)\) is at most the maximum value of \(\sum _{v\in [q]^n}x(\{v\})\), where x is a function \(\mathcal{C}_4\rightarrow {\mathbb {R}}_+\) such that \(x(\emptyset )=1\) and \(x(C)=\!0\) if C has minimum distance less than d, and such that the \(\mathcal{C}_2\times \mathcal{C}_2\) matrix \((x(C\cup C'))_{C,C'\in \mathcal{C}_2}\) is positive semidefinite. By the symmetry of the problem, we can apply representation theory to reduce the problem to a semidefinite programming problem with order bounded by a polynomial in n. It yields the new upper bounds \(A_4(6,3)\le 176\), \(A_4(7,3)\le 596\), \(A_4(7,4)\le 155\), \(A_5(7,4)\le 489\), and \(A_5(7,5)\le 87\).     

Partial permutation decoding for binary linear and $$Z_4$$-linear Hadamard codes

In this paper, s-\({\text {PD}}\)-sets of minimum size \(s+1\) for partial permutation decoding for the binary linear Hadamard code \(H_m\) of length \(2^m\), for all \(m\ge 4\) and \(2 \le s \le \lfloor {\frac{2^m}{1+m}}\rfloor -1\), are constructed. Moreover, recursive constructions to obtain s-\({\text {PD}}\)-sets of size \(l\ge s+1\) for \(H_{m+1}\) of length \(2^{m+1}\), from an s-\({\text {PD}}\)-set of the same size for \(H_m\), are also described. These results are generalized to find s-\({\text {PD}}\)-sets for the \({\mathbb {Z}}_4\)-linear Hadamard codes \(H_{\gamma , \delta }\) of length \(2^m\), \(m=\gamma +2\delta -1\), which are binary Hadamard codes (not necessarily linear) obtained as the Gray map image of quaternary linear codes of type \(2^\gamma 4^\delta \). Specifically, s-PD-sets of minimum size \(s+1\) for \(H_{\gamma , \delta }\), for all \(\delta \ge 3\) and \(2\le s \le \lfloor {\frac{2^{2\delta -2}}{\delta }}\rfloor -1\), are constructed and recursive constructions are described.     

Structural Properties of Word Representable Graphs

Given a word \(w=w_1w_2\cdots w_n\) of length n over an ordered alphabet \(\Sigma _k\), we construct a graph \(G(w)=(V(w), E(w))\) such that V(w) has n vertices labeled \(1, 2,\ldots , n\) and for \(i, j \in V(w)\), \((i, j) \in E(w)\) if and only if \(w_iw_j\) is a scattered subword of w of the form \(a_{t}a_{t+1}\), \(a_t \in \Sigma _k\), for some \(1 \le t \le k-1\) with the ordering \(a_t<a_{t+1}\). A graph is said to be Parikh word representable if there exists a word w over \(\Sigma _k\) such that \(G=G(w)\). In this paper we characterize all Parikh word representable graphs over the binary alphabet in terms of chordal bipartite graphs. It is well known that the graph isomorphism (GI) problem for chordal bipartite graph is GI complete. The GI problem for a subclass of (6, 2) chordal bipartite graphs has been addressed. The notion of graph powers is a well studied topic in graph theory and its applications. We also investigate a bipartite analogue of graph powers of Parikh word representable graphs. In fact we show that for G(w), \(G(w)^{[3]}\) is a complete bipartite graph, for any word w over binary alphabet.     

Multi-player Last Nim with Passes

We introduce a class of impartial combinatorial games, Multi-player Last Nim with Passes, denoted by MLNim\(^{(s)}(N,n)\): there are N piles of counters which are linearly ordered. In turn, each of n players either removes any positive integer of counters from the last pile, or makes a choice ‘pass’. Once a ‘pass’ option is used, the total number s of passes decreases by 1. When all s passes are used, no player may ever ‘pass’ again. A pass option can be used at any time, up to the penultimate move, but cannot be used at the end of the game. The player who cannot make a move wins the game. The aim is to determine the game values of the positions of MLNim\(^{(s)}(N,n)\) for all integers \(N\ge 1\) and \(n\ge 3\) and \(s\ge 1\). For \(n>N+1\) or \(n=N+1\ge 3\), the game values are completely determined for any \(s\ge 1\). For \(3\le n\le N\), the game values are determined for infinitely many triplets (N, n, s). We also present a possible explanation why determining the game values becomes more complicated if \(n\le N\).