Equiangular tight frames that contain regular simplices (Q1654389)

Let \(n\) and \(d\) be positive integers with \(n \geq d\). The coherence of a sequence \(\{\varphi_j\}_{j=1}^n\) of \(n\) nonzero equal norm vectors in a \(d\)-dimensional Hilbert space \(\mathcal H\) over \(\mathbb C\) is \(\max_{j\neq j'}\frac{\left|\langle \varphi_j, \varphi_{j'}\rangle\right|}{\| \varphi_j \| \|\varphi_{j'}\|}\). This work is motivated by two well-known bounds involving \(\mu\) (the second of them is a well-known bound from the theory of compressed sensing): {\parindent=0.7cm\begin{itemize}\item[--] Welch bound: \(\left(\frac{n-d}{d(n-1)}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}\), whenever \(n \geq d\). \item[--] Lower bound of the spark of \(\{\varphi_j\}_{j=1}^n\) (namely the smallest number of these vectors that are linearly dependent): \(\text{spark}\{\varphi_j\}_{j=1}^n \geq \frac{1}{\mu}+1\). \end{itemize}} It is well known that \(\{\varphi_j\}_{j=1}^n\) achieves equality in the Welch bound if and only if it is an equiangular tight frame (ETF) for \(\mathcal H\), that is, if and only if the value of \(\left|\langle \varphi_j, \varphi_{j'}\rangle\right|\) is constant over all \(j\neq j'\) (equiangularity) and there exists \(a > 0\) such that \(\sum_{j=1}^n \left|\langle \varphi_j, \mathbf{x}\rangle\right|^2=a \|\mathbf{x}\|^2\) for all \(\mathbf{x}\in \mathcal H\) (tightness). This paper focuses on ETFs that achieve equality in the lower bound of the spark. As we shall see, this happens precisely when the ETF contains a regular simplex, namely when for some positive integer \(s\) there are \(s+1\) of the \(\varphi_j\) vectors that form an ETF for an \(s\)-dimensional subspace of \(\mathcal H\). This paper is organized as follows. In Section 3, the authors show that an ETF achieves equality in the spark lower bound if and only if it contains a regular simplex (Theorem 3.1), and give a strong necessary condition on the existence of real ETFs that are full spark (Theorem 3.2). In the fourth section, they characterize regular simplices that are contained in an ETF in terms of triple products (Theorem 4.2), and then use this idea to develop an algorithm for computing the binder of an ETF, namely the set of all simplices it contains. The authors build upon these ideas in Section 5, discovering an intimate connection that sometimes arises between an ETF's binder and the phased BIBD ETFs of [the authors, ``Polyphase equiangular tight frames and abelian generalized quadrangles'', Appl. Comput. Harmon. Anal. (to appear; \url{doi:10.1016/j.acha.2017.11.007})]; see Theorems 5.1 and 5.2. In Section 6, they give several results about ETFs that happen to be disjoint unions of regular simplices, in particular relating them to equichordal tight fusion frames (ECTFFs); see Theorem 6.2. In the final section, the authors then apply these ideas to better understand various existing constructions of ETFs, in particular showing that certain harmonic ETFs are disjoint unions of regular simplices (Theorems 7.1 and 7.5).