Non-skew symmetric orthogonal matrices with constant diagonals

A matrix C of order n is orthogonal if CC^T=dI. In this paper, we restrict the study to orthogonal matrices with a constant m > 1 on the diagonal and ±1's off the diagonal. It is observed that all skew symmetric orthogonal matrices of this type are constructed from skew symmetric Hadamard matrices and vice versa. Some simple necessary conditions for the existence of non-skew orthogonal matrices are derived. Two basic construction techniques for non-skew orthogonal matrices are given. Several families of non-skew orthogonal matrices are constructed by applying the basic techniques to well-known combinatorial objects like balanced incomplete block designs. It is also shown that if m is even and n=0 (mod 4), then an orthogonal matrix must be skew symmetric. The structure of a non-skew orthogonal matrix in the special case of m odd,n=2 (mod 4) and m?1/6n is also studied in detail. Finally, a list of cases with n?50 is given where the existence of non-skew orthogonal matrices are unknown.