Distance-regular graphs

This is a survey of distance-regular graphs. We present an introduction to distance-regular graphs for the reader who is unfamiliar with the subject, and then give an overview of some developments in the area of distance-regular graphs since the monograph 'BCN' [Brouwer, A.E., Cohen, A.M., Neumaier, A., Distance-Regular Graphs, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1989] was written.Comment: 156 page

Exotic topological order in fractal spin liquids

We present a large class of three-dimensional spin models that possess topological order with stability against local perturbations, but are beyond description of topological quantum field theory. Conventional topological spin liquids, on a formal level, may be viewed as condensation of string-like extended objects with discrete gauge symmetries, being at fixed points with continuous scale symmetries. In contrast, ground states of fractal spin liquids are condensation of highly-fluctuating fractal objects with certain algebraic symmetries, corresponding to limit cycles under real-space renormalization group transformations which naturally arise from discrete scale symmetries of underlying fractal geometries. A particular class of three-dimensional models proposed in this paper may potentially saturate quantum information storage capacity for local spin systems.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure

Differentially 4-uniform functions

We give a geometric characterization of vectorial boolean functions with differential uniformity less or equal to 4

Commutative association schemes

Association schemes were originally introduced by Bose and his co-workers in the design of statistical experiments. Since that point of inception, the concept has proved useful in the study of group actions, in algebraic graph theory, in algebraic coding theory, and in areas as far afield as knot theory and numerical integration. This branch of the theory, viewed in this collection of surveys as the "commutative case," has seen significant activity in the last few decades. The goal of the present survey is to discuss the most important new developments in several directions, including Gelfand pairs, cometric association schemes, Delsarte Theory, spin models and the semidefinite programming technique. The narrative follows a thread through this list of topics, this being the contrast between combinatorial symmetry and group-theoretic symmetry, culminating in Schrijver's SDP bound for binary codes (based on group actions) and its connection to the Terwilliger algebra (based on combinatorial symmetry). We propose this new role of the Terwilliger algebra in Delsarte Theory as a central topic for future work.Comment: 36 page

Geometric approach to error correcting codes and reconstruction of signals

We develop an approach through geometric functional analysis to error correcting codes and to reconstruction of signals from few linear measurements. An error correcting code encodes an n-letter word x into an m-letter word y in such a way that x can be decoded correctly when any r letters of y are corrupted. We prove that most linear orthogonal transformations Q from R^n into R^m form efficient and robust robust error correcting codes over reals. The decoder (which corrects the corrupted components of y) is the metric projection onto the range of Q in the L_1 norm. An equivalent problem arises in signal processing: how to reconstruct a signal that belongs to a small class from few linear measurements? We prove that for most sets of Gaussian measurements, all signals of small support can be exactly reconstructed by the L_1 norm minimization. This is a substantial improvement of recent results of Donoho and of Candes and Tao. An equivalent problem in combinatorial geometry is the existence of a polytope with fixed number of facets and maximal number of lower-dimensional facets. We prove that most sections of the cube form such polytopes.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figure