Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

When equiangular tight frames (ETF's), a type of structured optimal packing of lines, exist and are of size $|\Phi|=N$, $\Phi\subset\mathbb{F}^d$ (where $\mathbb{F}=\mathbb{R}$, $\mathbb{C}$, or $\mathbb{H}$), for $p > 2$ the so-called $p$-frame energy $E_p(\Phi)=\sum\limits_{i\neq j} |\langle \varphi_{i}, \varphi_{j} \rangle|^p$ achieves its minimum value on an ETF over all sized $N$ collections of unit vectors. These energies have potential functions which are not positive definite when $p$ is not even. For these cases the apparent complexity of the problem of describing minimizers of these energies presents itself. While there are several open questions about the structure of these sets for fixed $N$ and fixed $p$, we focus on another question:

What structural properties are expressed by minimizing probability measures for the quantity $I_{p}(\mu)=\int\limits_{\mathbb{S}_{\mathbb{F}}^{d-1}}\int\limits_{\mathbb{S}_{\mathbb{F}}^{d-1}} |\langle x, y \rangle|^p d\mu(x) d\mu(y)$?
We collect a number of surprising observations. Whenever a tight spherical or projective $t$-design exists for the sphere $\mathbb{S}_{\mathbb{F}}^d$, equally distributing mass over it gives a minimizer of the quantity $I_{p}$ for a range of $p$ between consecutive even integers associated with the strength $t$. We show existence of discrete minimizers for several related potential functions, along with conditions which guarantee emptiness of the interior of the support of minimizers for these energies. 
This talk is based on joint work with D. Bilyk, A. Glazyrin, R. Matzke, and O. Vlasiuk.