Equiangular Lines and Spherical Codes in Euclidean Space

A family of lines through the origin in Euclidean space is called equiangular if any pair of lines defines the same angle. The problem of estimating the maximum cardinality of such a family in $\mathbb{R}^n$ was extensively studied for the last 70 years. Motivated by a question of Lemmens and Seidel from 1973, in this paper we prove that for every fixed angle $\theta$ and sufficiently large $n$ there are at most $2n-2$ lines in $\mathbb{R}^n$ with common angle $\theta$. Moreover, this is achievable only for $\theta = \arccos(1/3)$. We also show that for any set of $k$ fixed angles, one can find at most $O(n^k)$ lines in $\mathbb{R}^n$ having these angles. This bound, conjectured by Bukh, substantially improves the estimate of Delsarte, Goethals and Seidel from 1975. Various extensions of these results to the more general setting of spherical codes will be discussed as well.Comment: 24 pages, 0 figure

Grassmannian Frames with Applications to Coding and Communication

For a given class ${\cal F}$ of uniform frames of fixed redundancy we define a Grassmannian frame as one that minimizes the maximal correlation $|< f_k,f_l >|$ among all frames $\{f_k\}_{k \in {\cal I}} \in {\cal F}$. We first analyze finite-dimensional Grassmannian frames. Using links to packings in Grassmannian spaces and antipodal spherical codes we derive bounds on the minimal achievable correlation for Grassmannian frames. These bounds yield a simple condition under which Grassmannian frames coincide with uniform tight frames. We exploit connections to graph theory, equiangular line sets, and coding theory in order to derive explicit constructions of Grassmannian frames. Our findings extend recent results on uniform tight frames. We then introduce infinite-dimensional Grassmannian frames and analyze their connection to uniform tight frames for frames which are generated by group-like unitary systems. We derive an example of a Grassmannian Gabor frame by using connections to sphere packing theory. Finally we discuss the application of Grassmannian frames to wireless communication and to multiple description coding.Comment: Submitted in June 2002 to Appl. Comp. Harm. Ana

New bounds for equiangular lines

A set of lines in $\mathbb{R}^n$ is called equiangular if the angle between each pair of lines is the same. We address the question of determining the maximum size of equiangular line sets in $\mathbb{R}^n$, using semidefinite programming to improve the upper bounds on this quantity. Improvements are obtained in dimensions $24 \leq n \leq 136$. In particular, we show that the maximum number of equiangular lines in $\mathbb{R}^n$ is $276$ for all $24 \leq n \leq 41$ and is 344 for $n=43.$ This provides a partial resolution of the conjecture set forth by Lemmens and Seidel (1973).Comment: Minor corrections; added one new reference. To appear in "Discrete Geometry and Algebraic Combinatorics," A. Barg and O. R. Musin, Editors, Providence: RI, AMS (2014). AMS Contemporary Mathematics serie