50 Years of the Golomb--Welch Conjecture

Since 1968, when the Golomb--Welch conjecture was raised, it has become the main motive power behind the progress in the area of the perfect Lee codes. Although there is a vast literature on the topic and it is widely believed to be true, this conjecture is far from being solved. In this paper, we provide a survey of papers on the Golomb--Welch conjecture. Further, new results on Golomb--Welch conjecture dealing with perfect Lee codes of large radii are presented. Algebraic ways of tackling the conjecture in the future are discussed as well. Finally, a brief survey of research inspired by the conjecture is given.Comment: 28 pages, 2 figure

Diameter Perfect Lee Codes

Lee codes have been intensively studied for more than 40 years. Interest in these codes has been triggered by the Golomb-Welch conjecture on the existence of the perfect error-correcting Lee codes. In this paper we deal with the existence and enumeration of diameter perfect Lee codes. As main results we determine all $q$ for which there exists a linear diameter-4 perfect Lee code of word length $n$ over $Z_{q},$ and prove that for each $n\geq 3$ there are uncountable many diameter-4 perfect Lee codes of word length $n$ over $Z.$ This is in a strict contrast with perfect error-correcting Lee codes of word length $n$ over $Z\,$\ as there is a unique such code for $n=3,$ and its is conjectured that this is always the case when $2n+1$ is a prime. We produce diameter perfect Lee codes by an algebraic construction that is based on a group homomorphism. This will allow us to design an efficient algorithm for their decoding. We hope that this construction will turn out to be useful far beyond the scope of this paper

Error-Correcting Codes and Minkowski’s Conjecture

The goal of this paper is twofold. The main one is to survey the latest results on the perfect and quasi-perfect Lee error correcting codes. The other goal is to show that the area of Lee error correcting codes, like many ideas in mathematics, can trace its roots to the Phytagorean theorem a2+b2 = c2. Thus to show that the area of the perfect Lee error correcting codes is an integral part of mathematics. It turns out that Minkowski’s conjecture, which is an interface of number theory, approximation theory, geometry, linear algebra, and group theory is one of the milestones on the route to Lee codes

Packing of R3 by crosses

The existence of tilings of R^n by crosses, a cluster of unit cubes comprising a central one and 2n arms, has been studied by several authors. We have completely solved the problem for R^2, characterizing the crosses which lattice tile R^2, as well as determining the maximum packing density for the crosses which do not lattice tile the plane. In this paper we motivate a similar approach to study lattice packings of R^3 by crosses.The existence of tilings of Rn by crosses, a cluster of unit cubes comprising a central one and 2n arms, has been studied by several authors. We have completely solved the problem for R2 characterizing the crosses which lattice tile R2 as well as determining the maximum packing density for the crosses which do not lattice tile the plane. In this paper we motivate a similar approach to study lattice packings of R3 by crosses.publishe

Topological mechanics in quasicrystals

We study topological mechanics in two-dimensional quasicrystalline parallelogram tilings. Topological mechanics has been studied intensively in periodic lattices in the past a few years, leading to the discovery of topologically protected boundary floppy modes in Maxwell lattices. In this paper we extend this concept to quasicrystalline parallelogram tillings and we use the Penrose tiling as our example to demonstrate how these topological boundary floppy modes arise with a small geometric perturbation to the tiling. The same construction can also be applied to disordered parallelogram tilings to generate topological boundary floppy modes. We prove the existence of these topological boundary floppy modes using a duality theorem which relates floppy modes and states of self stress in parallelogram tilings and fiber networks, which are Maxwell reciprocal diagrams to one another. We find that, due to the unusual rotational symmetry of quasicrystals, the resulting topological polarization can exhibit orientations not allowed in periodic lattices. Our result reveals new physics about the interplay between topological states and quasicrystalline order, and leads to novel designs of quasicrystalline topological mechanical metamaterials.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure

Undecidability of the Spectral Gap (full version)

We show that the spectral gap problem is undecidable. Specifically, we construct families of translationally-invariant, nearest-neighbour Hamiltonians on a 2D square lattice of d-level quantum systems (d constant), for which determining whether the system is gapped or gapless is an undecidable problem. This is true even with the promise that each Hamiltonian is either gapped or gapless in the strongest sense: it is promised to either have continuous spectrum above the ground state in the thermodynamic limit, or its spectral gap is lower-bounded by a constant in the thermodynamic limit. Moreover, this constant can be taken equal to the local interaction strength of the Hamiltonian.Comment: v1: 146 pages, 56 theorems etc., 15 figures. See shorter companion paper arXiv:1502.04135 (same title and authors) for a short version omitting technical details. v2: Small but important fix to wording of abstract. v3: Simplified and shortened some parts of the proof; minor fixes to other parts. Now only 127 pages, 55 theorems etc., 10 figures. v4: Minor updates to introductio