On the existence of certain optimal self-dual codes with lengths between 74 and 116 (Q907221)

Summary: The existence of optimal binary self-dual codes is a long-standing research problem. In this paper, we present some results concerning the decomposition of binary self-dual codes with a dihedral automorphism group \(D_{2p}\), where \(p\) is a prime. These results are applied to construct new self-dual codes with length \(78\) or \(116\). We obtain \(16\) inequivalent self-dual \([78,39,14]\) codes, four of which have new weight enumerators. We also show that there are at least \(141\) inequivalent self-dual \([116,58,18]\) codes, most of which are new up to equivalence. Meanwhile, we give some restrictions on the weight enumerators of singly even self-dual codes. We use these restrictions to exclude some possible weight enumerators of self-dual codes with lengths \(74\), \(76\), \(82\), \(98\) and \(100\).