Existence and nonexistence of spherical $5$-designs of minimal type

Abstract

This paper investigates the existence and properties of spherical $5$-designs of minimal type. We focus on two cases: tight spherical $5$-designs and antipodal spherical $4$-distance $5$-designs. We prove that a tight spherical $5$-design is of minimal type if and only if it possesses a specific $Q$-polynomial coherent configuration structure. For tight spherical $5$-designs in $\mathbb{R}^d$ of minimal type, we demonstrate that half of the derived code forms an equiangular tight frames (ETF) with parameters $(d-1, \frac{(d-1)(d+1)}{3})$. This provides a sufficient condition for constructing such ETFs from maximal ETFs with parameters $(d, \frac{d(d+1)}{2})$. Moreover, we establish that tight spherical $5$-designs of minimal type cannot exist if the dimension $d$ satisfies a certain arithmetic condition, which holds for infinitely many values of $d$, including $d=119$ and $527$. For antipodal spherical $4$-distance $5$-designs, we utilize valency theory to derive necessary conditions for certain special types of antipodal spherical $4$-distance $5$-designs to be of minimal type.