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Paley construction

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The Paley construction uses quadratic residues in a finite field GF(q) where q is a power of an odd prime number. There are two versions of the construction depending on whether q is congruent to 1 or 3 modulo 4.

Quadratic character and Jacobsthal matrix

Let q be a power of an odd prime. In the finite field GF(q) the quadratic character χ(a) indicates whether the element a is zero, a non-zero square, or a non-square:

χ(a)={0if a=01if a=b2 for some non-zero b∈GF(q)−1if a is not the square of any element in GF(q).

For example, in GF(7) the non-zero squares are 1 = 12 = 62, 4 = 22 = 52, and 2 = 32 = 42. Hence χ(0) = 0, χ(1) = χ(2) = χ(4) = 1, and χ(3) = χ(5) = χ(6) = −1.

The Jacobsthal matrix Q for GF(q) is the q × q matrix with rows and columns indexed by elements of GF(q) such that the entry in row a and column b is χ(a − b). For example, in GF(7), if the rows and columns of the Jacobsthal matrix are indexed by the field elements 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, then

Q=[0−1−11−11110−1−11−11110−1−11−1−1110−1−111−1110−1−1−11−1110−1−1−11−1110].

The Jacobsthal matrix has the properties QQT = qI − J and QJ = JQ = 0 where I is the q × q identity matrix and J is the q × q all 1 matrix. If q is congruent to 1 mod 4 then −1 is a square in GF(q) which implies that Q is a symmetric matrix. If q is congruent to 3 mod 4 then −1 is not a square, and Q is a skew-symmetric matrix. When q is a prime number and rows and columns are indexed by field elements in the usual 0, 1, 2, … order, Q is a circulant matrix. That is, each row is obtained from the row above by cyclic permutation.

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