Skew Hadamard difference sets from the Ree-Tits slice symplectic spreads in PG(3,3^{2h+1})

Using a class of permutation polynomials of $F_{3^{2h+1}}$ obtained from the Ree-Tits symplectic spreads in $PG(3,3^{2h+1})$, we construct a family of skew Hadamard difference sets in the additive group of $F_{3^{2h+1}}$. With the help of a computer, we show that these skew Hadamard difference sets are new when $h=2$ and $h=3$. We conjecture that they are always new when $h>3$. Furthermore, we present a variation of the classical construction of the twin prime power difference sets, and show that inequivalent skew Hadamard difference sets lead to inequivalent difference sets with twin prime power parameters.Comment: 18 page

Harmonic equiangular tight frames comprised of regular simplices

An equiangular tight frame (ETF) is a sequence of unit-norm vectors in a Euclidean space whose coherence achieves equality in the Welch bound, and thus yields an optimal packing in a projective space. A regular simplex is a simple type of ETF in which the number of vectors is one more than the dimension of the underlying space. More sophisticated examples include harmonic ETFs which equate to difference sets in finite abelian groups. Recently, it was shown that some harmonic ETFs are comprised of regular simplices. In this paper, we continue the investigation into these special harmonic ETFs. We begin by characterizing when the subspaces that are spanned by the ETF's regular simplices form an equi-isoclinic tight fusion frame (EITFF), which is a type of optimal packing in a Grassmannian space. We shall see that every difference set that produces an EITFF in this way also yields a complex circulant conference matrix. Next, we consider a subclass of these difference sets that can be factored in terms of a smaller difference set and a relative difference set. It turns out that these relative difference sets lend themselves to a second, related and yet distinct, construction of complex circulant conference matrices. Finally, we provide explicit infinite families of ETFs to which this theory applies

Symmetric Bush-type generalized Hadamard matrices and association schemes

We define Bush-type generalized Hadamard matrices over abelian groups and construct symmetric Bush-type generalized Hadamard matrices over the additive group of finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$, $q$ a prime power. We then show and study an association scheme obtained from such generalized Hadamard matrices.Comment: 10 page