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Pádraig Ó Catháin

Publications and source records attributed to Pádraig Ó Catháin.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

On complete morphisms of Butson Hadamard matrices

A complete morphism of Butson classes replaces each entry of a matrix in $\mathrm{BH}(n,k)$ by an $m \times m$ block, uniformly, to produce a matrix in $\mathrm{BH}(mn,t)$. We show that every complete morphism is described by a pair $(U,Z)$, where $Z \in \mathrm{BH}(m,t)$ and $U$ is a unitary matrix annihilated by the $k^{\textrm{th}}$ cyclotomic polynomial. We deduce from a theorem of Lam and Leung that complete morphisms onto real Hadamard matrices exist precisely when $k$ is a power of $2$. The exponent-reducing morphisms of Östergård--Paavola and Ó Catháin--Swartz achieve the smallest block size the degree bound allows, and we show that there are no other complete morphisms for which $U$ is monomial. We construct new complete morphisms where $U$ is not monomial: a complete morphism $\mathrm{BH}(n,7) \rightarrow \mathrm{BH}(6n,6)$ is given, the first to eliminate a prime from the alphabet.

math.CO↗

Recent progress in the construction of Hadamard matrices

A Hadamard matrix is a square matrix with entries $\pm 1$ whose rows are mutually orthogonal. Hadamard matrices are conjectured to exist at every order divisible by $4$; for approximately the last twenty years, the smallest open case of this conjecture was order 668. In August 2026, Alpöge, Voinov and Reynolds-Haertle announced Hadamard matrices at the twelve orders below $2000$ at which none was known. In this paper we verify and analyse the claimed matrices. We survey results on the existence of Hadamard matrices and list the $95$ orders up to $10\,000$ at which no Hadamard matrix is currently known. In pursuing this work we constructed Hadamard matrices at sixteen orders that were open in the published literature. We conclude with a list of open problems.

math.CO↗

Cliques in graphs constructed from Strongly Orthogonal Subsets in exceptional root systems

Given a root system $R$, two roots are said to be \emph{strongly orthogonal} if neither their sum nor difference is a root. Gashi defined a family of graphs with vertices labelled by sums of $k$-element strongly orthogonal subsets of roots, and edges connect vertices whose difference is also a vertex. Gashi and the current authors established Erdős--Ko--Rado type results for graphs developed from Type $A$ root systems. In this paper, we study graphs developed from the exceptional root systems $G_2$, $F_4$, $E_6$, $E_7$, and $E_8$. We compute graph-theoretic invariants including regularity, connectivity, and clique numbers, and analyze clique structures with respect to sunflower properties. The automorphism group contains the Weyl group; we use these symmetries to obtain complete counts of maximum cliques and maximum sunflowers. Unlike type $A$, where all maximal cliques are sunflowers for large rank, sunflower cliques comprise at most 11\% of maximum cliques in the simply-laced exceptional types $E_6$, $E_7$, and $E_8$.

math.CO↗