Classical Kloosterman sums: representation theory, magic squares, and Ramanujan multigraphs (Q627626)

Let \(a,b\) be integers, and \(p\) a prime number. The authors consider a certain finite group for which the classical Kloosterman sums \[ K(a,b,p) = \sum_{x=1}^{p-1} e^{2 \pi i \frac{(ax+b/x)}{p}} \] appear as values of the corresponding group characters. This gives a possibility to treat Kloosterman sums as eigenvalues of a concrete family of commuting Hermitian matrices. The authors pointed out that these matrices satisfy a number of remarkable combinatorial properties and then show that these properties induce the corresponding nice properties of the above sums \(K(a,b,p)\). Unfortunately, the paper does not give anything new concerning the Weil bound for \(K(a,b,p)\) in the case when \(ab \not \equiv 0\pmod p\).