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

Some Applications of Coding Theory in Cryptography

viii+80hlm.;24c

Finding Significant Fourier Coefficients: Clarifications, Simplifications, Applications and Limitations

Ideas from Fourier analysis have been used in cryptography for the last three decades. Akavia, Goldwasser and Safra unified some of these ideas to give a complete algorithm that finds significant Fourier coefficients of functions on any finite abelian group. Their algorithm stimulated a lot of interest in the cryptography community, especially in the context of `bit security'. This manuscript attempts to be a friendly and comprehensive guide to the tools and results in this field. The intended readership is cryptographers who have heard about these tools and seek an understanding of their mechanics and their usefulness and limitations. A compact overview of the algorithm is presented with emphasis on the ideas behind it. We show how these ideas can be extended to a `modulus-switching' variant of the algorithm. We survey some applications of this algorithm, and explain that several results should be taken in the right context. In particular, we point out that some of the most important bit security problems are still open. Our original contributions include: a discussion of the limitations on the usefulness of these tools; an answer to an open question about the modular inversion hidden number problem

Modern Cryptography Volume 1

This open access book systematically explores the statistical characteristics of cryptographic systems, the computational complexity theory of cryptographic algorithms and the mathematical principles behind various encryption and decryption algorithms. The theory stems from technology. Based on Shannon's information theory, this book systematically introduces the information theory, statistical characteristics and computational complexity theory of public key cryptography, focusing on the three main algorithms of public key cryptography, RSA, discrete logarithm and elliptic curve cryptosystem. It aims to indicate what it is and why it is. It systematically simplifies and combs the theory and technology of lattice cryptography, which is the greatest feature of this book. It requires a good knowledge in algebra, number theory and probability statistics for readers to read this book. The senior students majoring in mathematics, compulsory for cryptography and science and engineering postgraduates will find this book helpful. It can also be used as the main reference book for researchers in cryptography and cryptographic engineering areas