Determinants of (–1,1)-matrices of the skew-symmetric type: a cocyclic approach

An n by n skew-symmetric type (−1, 1)-matrix K = [ki,j ] has 1’s on the main diagonal and ±1’s elsewhere with ki,j = −kj,i. The largest possible determinant of such a matrix K is an interesting problem. The literature is extensive for n 0 mod 4 (skew- Hadamard matrices), but for n 2 mod 4 there are few results known for this question. In this paper we approach this problem constructing cocyclic matrices over the dihedral group of 2t elements, for t odd, which are equivalent to (−1, 1)-matrices of skew type. Some explicit calculations have been done up to t = 11. To our knowledge, the upper bounds on the maximal determinant in orders 18 and 22 have been improved.Junta de Andalucía FQM-01

Embedding cocylic D-optimal designs in cocylic Hadamard matrices

A method for embedding cocyclic submatrices with “large” determinants of orders 2t in certain cocyclic Hadamard matrices of orders 4t is described (t an odd integer). If these determinants attain the largest possible value, we are embedding D-optimal designs. Applications to the pivot values that appear when Gaussian elimination with complete pivoting is performed on these cocyclic Hadamard matrices are studied.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación MTM2008-06578Junta de Andalucía FQM-016Junta de Andalucía P07-FQM-0298

Probabilistic lower bounds on maximal determinants of binary matrices

Let ${\mathcal D}(n)$ be the maximal determinant for $n \times n$ $\{\pm 1\}$-matrices, and $\mathcal R(n) = {\mathcal D}(n)/n^{n/2}$ be the ratio of ${\mathcal D}(n)$ to the Hadamard upper bound. Using the probabilistic method, we prove new lower bounds on ${\mathcal D}(n)$ and $\mathcal R(n)$ in terms of $d = n-h$, where $h$ is the order of a Hadamard matrix and $h$ is maximal subject to $h \le n$. For example, $\mathcal R(n) > (\pi e/2)^{-d/2}$ if $1 \le d \le 3$, and $\mathcal R(n) > (\pi e/2)^{-d/2}(1 - d^2(\pi/(2h))^{1/2})$ if $d > 3$. By a recent result of Livinskyi, $d^2/h^{1/2} \to 0$ as $n \to \infty$, so the second bound is close to $(\pi e/2)^{-d/2}$ for large $n$. Previous lower bounds tended to zero as $n \to \infty$ with $d$ fixed, except in the cases $d \in \{0,1\}$. For $d \ge 2$, our bounds are better for all sufficiently large $n$. If the Hadamard conjecture is true, then $d \le 3$, so the first bound above shows that $\mathcal R(n)$ is bounded below by a positive constant $(\pi e/2)^{-3/2} > 0.1133$.Comment: 17 pages, 2 tables, 24 references. Shorter version of arXiv:1402.6817v4. Typos corrected in v2 and v3, new Lemma 7 in v4, updated references in v5, added Remark 2.8 and a reference in v6, updated references in v