On spherical designs of some harmonic indices (Q528991)

Summary: A finite subset \(Y\) on the unit sphere \(S^{n-1} \subseteq \mathbb{R}^n\) is called a spherical design of harmonic index \(t\), if the following condition is satisfied: \(\sum_{x\in Y}f(x)=0\) for all real homogeneous harmonic polynomials \(f(x_1,\ldots,x_n)\) of degree \(t\).~Also, for a subset \(T\) of \(\mathbb{N} = \{1,2,\cdots \}\), a finite subset \(Y \subseteq S^{n-1}\) is called a spherical design of harmonic index \(T,\) if \(\sum_{x\in Y}f(x)=0\) is satisfied for all real homogeneous harmonic polynomials \(f(x_1,\ldots,x_n)\) of degree \(k\) with \(k\in T\).{ }In the present paper we first study Fisher type lower bounds for the sizes of spherical designs of harmonic index \(t\) (or for harmonic index \(T\)). We also study `tight' spherical designs of harmonic index \(t\) or index \(T\). Here `tight' means that the size of \(Y\) attains the lower bound for this Fisher type inequality. The classification problem of tight spherical designs of harmonic index \(t\) was started by \textit{E. Bannai} et al. [J. Approx. Theory 195, 1--18 (2015; Zbl 1312.05030)], and the case \(t = 4\) was completed by \textit{T. Okuda} and \textit{W.-H. Yu} [Eur. J. Comb. 53, 96--103 (2016; Zbl 1328.05034)]. In this paper we show the classification (non-existence) of tight spherical designs of harmonic index 6 and 8, as well as the asymptotic non-existence of tight spherical designs of harmonic index \(2e\) for general \(e\geq 3\). We also study the existence problem for tight spherical designs of harmonic index \(T\) for some \(T\), in particular, including index \(T = \{8,4\}\).