Classical Kloosterman sums: representation theory, magic squares, and Ramanujan multigraphs

Abstract

We study the representation theory of a certain finite group for which Kloosterman sums appear as character values. This leads us to consider a concrete family of commuting hermitian matrices which have Kloosterman sums as eigenvalues. These matrices satisfy a number of "magical" combinatorial properties and they encode various arithmetic properties of Kloosterman sums. These matrices can also be regarded as adjacency matrices for multigraphs which display Ramanujan-like behavior.