Toward the classification of biangular harmonic frames

Equiangular tight frames, biangular tight frames, harmonic frames, difference sets, divisible difference sets, relative difference sets, partial difference sets

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Combinatorial aspects of difference sets (number-theoretic, group-theoretic, etc.) (05B10) General harmonic expansions, frames (42C15)

Abstract: Equiangular tight frames (ETFs) and biangular tight frames (BTFs) - sets of unit vectors with basis-like properties whose pairwise absolute inner products admit exactly one or two values, respectively - are useful for many applications. A well-understood class of ETFs are those which manifest as harmonic frames - vector sets defined in terms of the characters of finite abelian groups - because they are characterized by combinatorial objects called difference sets. This work is dedicated to the study of the underlying combinatorial structures of harmonic BTFs. We show that if a harmonic frame is generated by a divisible difference set, a partial difference set or by a special structure with certain Gauss summing properties - all three of which are generalizations of difference sets that fall under the umbrella term "bidifference set" - then it is either a BTF or an ETF. However, we also show that the relationship between harmonic BTFs and bidifference sets is not as straightforward as the correspondence between harmonic ETFs and difference sets, as there are examples of bidifference sets that do not generate harmonic BTFs. In addition, we study another class of combinatorial structures, the nested divisible difference sets, which yields an example of a harmonic BTF that is not generated by a bidifference set.

Review text

The authors of the present paper recall some concepts related to frames in Hilbert spaces, such as tight frames, unit-norm frames, frame angles, frame angle multiplicities, equiangular frames, biangular frames, and equidistributed frames. Then, they review some concepts and results in group theory and character theory. They recall some facts about abelian groups, characters, dual groups, annihilator of a subgroup and quotient groups. After that, harmonic frames and modulation operators are considered and some results about them are stated. In Section 4, where the main results of the paper are obtained, the authors, using subsets of a group, define some concepts like nested difference set, proper nested difference set, difference set, bidifference set, proper bidifference set, divisible difference set, partial difference set, reversible set, regular set, Gaussian difference set, almost difference set, nested divisible difference set and present several examples and results for them. Especially, they show that if a harmonic frame is generated by a divisible difference set, a partial difference set or by a Gaussian difference set, then it is either a BTF (biangular tight frame) or an ETF (equiangular tight frame). Moreover, they present some examples of bidifference sets that do not generate biangular harmonic frames and conclude that the relationship between harmonic BTFs and bidifference sets is not as nice as the correspondence between harmonic ETFs and difference sets. Mainly, they focus on the study of nested divisible difference sets to give an example of a biangular harmonic frame that is not generated by a bidifference set.

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