Self-orthogonal codes from equitable partitions of association schemes (Q2114781)

Let \(X\) be a finite set. A (symmetric) association scheme with \(d\) classes is a pair \((X,\mathcal{R})\) such that \begin{itemize} \item[(1)] \(\mathcal{R} = \{R_0, R_1, \ldots , R_d\}\) is a partition of \(X \times X,\) \item[(2)] \(R_0 = \{(x,x):~ x \in X \},\) \item[(3)] For \(i \in \{0,1,\ldots, d\},\) \(R_i = R_i^T\) (here, \((x, y) \in R_i \Longrightarrow (y, x) \in R_i\)), \item[(4)] There are numbers \(p^k_{ij}\) (called the intersection numbers of the scheme) such that for any pair \((x, y) \in R_k,\) the number of \(z \in X\) such that \((x, z) \in R_i\) and \((z, y) \in R_j\) equals \(p^k_{ij}.\) \end{itemize} Let \(\{C_0,C_1, \ldots, C_{t-1}\}\) be a partition of \(X.\) The characteristic matrix \(H\) is the \(n \times t\) matrix whose \(j\)-th column is the characteristic vector of \(C_j,\) where \(j = 0,1, \ldots, t-1.\) A partition \(\Pi = \{C_0,C_1, \ldots,C_{t-1}\}\) of the \(n\) vertices of a graph \(G\) is \textit{equitable} (or regular) if for every pair of (not necessarily distinct) indices \(i , j \in [0, t-1]_{\mathbb{Z}}\) there is a nonnegative integer \(b_{ij}\) such that each vertex \(v \in C_i\) has exactly \(b_{ij}\) neighbors in \(C_j,\) regardless of the choice of \(v.\) The \(t \times t\) quotient matrix \(B = (b_{i j} )\) is well-defined if and only if the partition \(\Pi\) is equitable. An equitable (or regular) partition of an association scheme \((X,R)\) is a partition of \(X\) which is equitable with respect to each of the graphs \(\Gamma_i:=(X,R_i),\) \(i \in [1,d]_{\mathbb{Z}},\) corresponding to the association scheme \((X,\mathcal{R})\) with \(d\) classes. The theorems below give a construction method of self-orthogonal codes over a finite field \(\mathbb{F}_q\) and a finite ring \(\mathbb{Z}_m,\) respectively. Theorem 2. (in the paper) Let \(\Pi\) be an equitable partition of a \(d\)-class association scheme \((X,\mathcal{R})\) with \(n\) cells of the same length \(\frac{|X|}{n}\) and let \(p\) be a prime number. If there exists \(i \in [1,d]_{\mathbb{Z}}\) such that for all \(k \in [0,d]_{\mathbb{Z}}\) the prime \(p\) divides \(p^k_{ii},\) then the rows of the matrix \(M_i\) span a self-orthogonal code of length \(n\) over the field \(\mathbb{F}_q,\) where \(q=p^m\) is a prime power. Theorem 3. (in the paper) Let \(\Pi\) be an equitable partition of a \(d\)-class association scheme \((X,\mathcal{R})\) with \(n\) cells of the same length \(\frac{|X|}{n}\) and let \(p\) be a prime number. If there exists \(i \in [1,d]_{\mathbb{Z}}\) such that for all \(k \in [0,d]_{\mathbb{Z}}\) the prime \(m\) divides \(p^k_{ii},\) then the rows of the matrix \(M_i\) span a self-orthogonal code of length \(n\) over the ring \(\mathbb{Z}_m.\) In the above two theorems, \[ M_i := (H^T H)^{-1} H^T A_i H, \] with \(A_i\) is an adjacency matrix corresponding to a relation \(R_i\) in the association schemes. Moreover, as usual, a linear code over a finite field and a finite ring, is defined as a related subspace and submodule, respectively. By using the above two methods, the authors constructed codes over finite fields from distance regular graphs of diameter \(d,\) with \(3 \leq d \leq 8,\) which some of them are optimal. Further, the authors also introduce a notion of self-orthogonal subspace codes. They show that under some conditions, equitable partitions of association schemes yield such self-orthogonal subspace codes (Theorem 4). Then, by applying Corollary 3, the authors give some examples of the codes constructed from distance-regular graphs.