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

Computationally efficient methods for modelling laser wakefield acceleration in the blowout regime

Electron self-injection and acceleration until dephasing in the blowout regime is studied for a set of initial conditions typical of recent experiments with 100 terawatt-class lasers. Two different approaches to computationally efficient, fully explicit, three-dimensional particle-in-cell modelling are examined. First, the Cartesian code VORPAL using a perfect-dispersion electromagnetic solver precisely describes the laser pulse and bubble dynamics, taking advantage of coarser resolution in the propagation direction, with a proportionally larger time step. Using third-order splines for macroparticles helps suppress the sampling noise while keeping the usage of computational resources modest. The second way to reduce the simulation load is using reduced-geometry codes. In our case, the quasi-cylindrical code CALDER-CIRC uses decomposition of fields and currents into a set of poloidal modes, while the macroparticles move in the Cartesian 3D space. Cylindrical symmetry of the interaction allows using just two modes, reducing the computational load to roughly that of a planar Cartesian simulation while preserving the 3D nature of the interaction. This significant economy of resources allows using fine resolution in the direction of propagation and a small time step, making numerical dispersion vanishingly small, together with a large number of particles per cell, enabling good particle statistics. Quantitative agreement of the two simulations indicates that they are free of numerical artefacts. Both approaches thus retrieve physically correct evolution of the plasma bubble, recovering the intrinsic connection of electron self-injection to the nonlinear optical evolution of the driver

Codes over Matrix Rings for Space-Time Coded Modulations

It is known that, for transmission over quasi-static MIMO fading channels with n transmit antennas, diversity can be obtained by using an inner fully diverse space-time block code while coding gain, derived from the determinant criterion, comes from an appropriate outer code. When the inner code has a cyclic algebra structure over a number field, as for perfect space-time codes, an outer code can be designed via coset coding. More precisely, we take the quotient of the algebra by a two-sided ideal which leads to a finite alphabet for the outer code, with a cyclic algebra structure over a finite field or a finite ring. We show that the determinant criterion induces various metrics on the outer code, such as the Hamming and Bachoc distances. When n=2, partitioning the 2x2 Golden code by using an ideal above the prime 2 leads to consider codes over either M2(F_2) or M2(F_2[i]), both being non-commutative alphabets. Matrix rings of higher dimension, suitable for 3x3 and 4x4 perfect codes, give rise to more complex examples

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