Mutually unbiased bush-type Hadamard matrices and association schemes (Q2517656)

Summary: It was shown by \textit{N. LeCompte} et al. [Eur. J. Comb. 31, No. 6, 1499--1512 (2010; Zbl 1195.81026)] that the existence of mutually unbiased Hadamard matrices and the identity matrix, which coincide with mutually unbiased bases, is equivalent to that of a \(Q\)-polynomial association scheme of class four which is both \(Q\)-antipodal and \(Q\)-bipartite. ~We prove that the existence of a set of mutually unbiased Bush-type Hadamard matrices is equivalent to that of an association scheme of class five.~As an application of this equivalence, we obtain an upper bound of the number of mutually unbiased Bush-type Hadamard matrices of order \(4n^2\) to be \(2n-1\). This is in contrast to the fact that the best general upper bound for the mutually unbiased Hadamard matrices of order \(4n^2\) is \(2n^2\). We also discuss a relation of our scheme to some fusion schemes which are \(Q\)-antipodal and \(Q\)-bipartite \(Q\)-polynomial of class \(4\).