Extreme lattices and vexillar designs (Q848525)

The author introduces the new notion of \textit{vexillar design} for the \textit{flag varieties} in the spirit of the already known \textit{spherical designs}. He explains how the orbits of any flag under the action of a finite group can be a design and he shows that a lattice is locally optimum for the \textit{general Hermite constant} when its minima form a \textit{\(4\)-design}. As an application, the author proves the \textit{extremality} of several new expected lattices (root lattice \(E_8\), Leech lattice \(\Lambda_{24}\), Barnes-Wall lattices, Thompson-Smith lattices for instance) that were out of reach up to now. The article is structured in the following way: The introduction recalls the historical context with connection with some works of \textit{P. Delsarte, J. M. Goethals, J. J. Seidel} [``Spherical codes and designs,'' Geom. Dedicata 6, 363--388 (1977; Zbl 0376.05015)], \textit{B. Venkov} [Réseaux et designs sphériques. Réseaux euclidiens, designs sphériques et formes modulaires, Autour des travaux de Boris Venkov. Genéve: L'Enseignement Mathématique. Monogr. Enseign. Math. 37, 10--86 (2001; Zbl 1139.11320)] \textit{W. Lempken, B. Schröder, Pham Huu Tiep} [``Symmetric squares, spherical designs and lattice minima, with an appendix with C. Bachoc and Tiep,'' J. Algebra 240, No.1, 185--208 (2001; Zbl 1012.11054)], \textit{C. Bachoc, R. Coulangeon, G. Nebe} [``Designs in Grassmannian spaces and lattices,'' J. Algebr. Comb. 16, No. 1, 5--19 (2002; Zbl 1035.05027)], and \textit{C. Bachoc, E. Bannai, R. Coulangeon} [``Codes and Designs in Grassmannian spaces,'' Discrete Math. 277, No. 1-3, 15--28 (2004; Zbl 1040.05005)]. The author details or recalls, in the context of the field of rational numbers, the numerous definitions necessary for its reading : \textit{general Hermite constant, flags, flag variety, tableaux, bitableaux, Schur functor, square integrable functions, zonal functions, spherical design, vexillar \(t\)-designs, minimal flag, \(\lambda\)-perfect, \(\lambda\)-eutactic, \(\lambda\)-extreme lattices, \(\lambda\)-strongly perfect lattices.} In particular, the \textit{Hermite-invariant} of a full-rank \(L\) contained in \(\mathbb R^n\) is defined by \[ \gamma_{\lambda,n}(L)=\inf_{\Lambda\subset L}\frac{\det{(\Lambda_1)}\cdots \det{(\Lambda_{\check{s}})}}{(\det(L))^{\frac{|\lambda|}{n}}}, \] where \(\Lambda=(\Lambda_1,\dots,\Lambda_{\check{s}})\) is a chain of nested sublattices of \(L\) satisfying the condition \(rk(\Lambda_i)=\check{\lambda}_i\) for all \(i=1,\dots,\check{s}\). The \textit{Hermite constant } \(\gamma_{\lambda, n}\) is defined by \(\gamma_{\lambda,n}=\sup_{L}{\gamma_{\lambda,n}(L)}\), where the supremum is taken over all the full-rank lattices \(L\) of \(\mathbb R^n\). A lattice is called \textit{\(\lambda\)-extreme} when it achieves a local maximum of \(\gamma_{\lambda,n}(L)\). Section 1 recalls some notions on the flag variety. Section 2 recalls how the space of regular functions on the flag variety decomposes into orthogonal irreducible components under the action of the orthogonal group. Section 3 deals with the construction of some zonal functions of low degree, which allows to introduce in section 4 the notion of \textit{vexillar design} which suits for the use of the general Hermite constant. In particular, the author gives some equivalent conditions for a finite set to be a design:\textit{If a subgroup \(G\) of the orthogonal group \(\text{O}(n)\) has no harmonic invariant of degree \(d\) for \(1\leq d\leq t\), then any finite \(G\)-orbit is a \(t\)-design.} Section 5 exhibits the link between \(4\)-lattices and extreme lattices. The last section describes some examples which benefit from this theory and shows that the root lattice \(E_8\), the Leech lattice \(\Lambda_{24}\), the Barnes-Wall lattices, and the Thompson-Smith lattice are new \(\lambda\)-extreme lattices for all \(\lambda\).