On the existence of abelian Hadamard difference sets and a new family of difference sets (Q1266426)

The paper under review ranks as one of the most important contributions to the construction of difference sets. It finally settles a problem which has been studied by various researchers, starting with the seminal paper of \textit{M.-Y. Xia} [Some infinite classes of special Williamson matrices and difference sets, J. Comb. Theory, Ser. A 61, No. 2, 230-242 (1992; Zbl 0772.05022)], by proving the existence of Hadamard difference sets, that is, difference sets with parameters \(v= 4u^2\), \(k= 2u^2\pm u\) and \(\lambda= u^2\pm u\), whenever \(u\) is the square of an odd prime power (in the additive group of the appropriate finite field). As a by-product, the author also constructs the following new family of difference sets, which are by now generally called Chen difference sets: Here \(G\) is any group of the form \(G= K\times E\), where \(K\) is any abelian group of order \(4(q^{2d}- 1)/(q^2- 1)\) (\(q\) a prime power and \(d\) a positive integer) and where \(E\) is the elementary abelian group of order \(q^{2d}\). Then \(G\) contains a difference set with parameters \[ v= 4q^{2d} {q^{2d}- 1\over q^2- 1},\quad k= q^{2d- 1}\Biggl({2(q^{2d}- 1)\over q+1}+ 1\Biggr)\quad\text{and}\quad \lambda= q^{2d- 1}(q-1){q^{2d- 1}+ 1\over q+ 1}, \] provided that \(q\) is an odd square or a power of 3.