On covering radii and coset weight distributions of extremal binary self-dual codes of length 56 (Q2705970)

This paper presents a method for determining the complete coset weight distribution of an extremal doubly-even binary self-dual \([56,28,12]\) code. This method employs information from Jacobi polynomials. The key steps in the algorithm are: 1) Describe the shape of the basis for the linear space of rigid Jacobi polynomials associated with these codes for each index \(i\). 2) Describe the basis polynomials for the coset weight polynomials of the assigned coset weight \(i\) by means of rigid Jacobi polynomials of index \(i\). Multiplicity of the cosets of weight \(i\) have a connection with the frequency of the rigid reference binary vectors \(v\) of weight \(i\) for the Jacobi polynomials. Using this method, it is sufficient to obtain information on 8190 codewords of weight 12 (minimal weight) to determine the coset weight distribution of a binary doubly-even self-dual \([56,28,12]\) code. Several examples are given. This method can also be employed for singly-even self-dual codes and non-self-dual codes, but determining the complete coset weight distribution is much more complex in the latter case since the theory of invariants cannot be used.