Equiangular tight frames with centroidal symmetry (Q1690710)

Let \(m \leq n\) be positive integers and let \(\{\varphi_i\}_{i=1}^n\) be a sequence of unit vectors in \(\mathbb F^m\) where the field \(\mathbb F\) is either the real line \(\mathbb R\) or the complex plane \(\mathbb C\). The quantity \(\max_{i\neq j} |\langle \varphi_i,\varphi_j \rangle|\) is known as the coherence of \(\{\varphi_i\}_{i=1}^n\). As remarked by the authors, in certain real-world applications, one seeks a sequence of \(n\) unit norm vectors in \(\mathbb F^m\) whose coherence is as small as possible. The Welch bound is the most famous example of an explicit lower bound on the coherence. This paper discusses special classes of equiangular tight frames (ETFs) that possess certain types of symmetry. An ETF is a set of unit vectors whose coherence achieves the Welch bound, and so is as incoherent as possible. Specifically, the authors of the paper consider ETFs with the property that the all-ones vector \(\mathbf{1}\) is an eigenvector of the Gram matrix \(\Phi^{*} \Phi\), where \(\Phi\) is the \(m\times n\) matrix which defines the synthesis operator of \(\{\varphi_i\}_{i=1}^n\) and \(\Phi^{*}\) is its conjugate transpose. In Section 3, they prove that having \(\mathbf{1}\) as an eigenvector of \(\Phi^{*} \Phi\) is equivalent to the ETF being symmetric about its centroid in one of two possible ways. In the fourth section, they prove that real ETFs with centroidal symmetry are equivalent to certain types of strongly regular graphs (SRGs). Exploiting this new equivalence, they give the first proof of the existence of certain SRGs and the nonexistence of the others.