Wieferich pairs and Barker sequences, II

Abstract

We show that if a Barker sequence of length $n>13$ exists, then either $n=3979201339721749133016171583224100$, or $n > 4\cdot10^{33}$. This improves the lower bound on the length of a long Barker sequence by a factor of nearly 2000. We also obtain 18 additional integers $n<10^{50}$ that cannot be ruled out as the length of a Barker sequence, and find more than 237000 additional candidates $n<10^{100}$. These results are obtained by completing extensive searches for Wieferich prime pairs and using them, together with a number of arithmetic restrictions on $n$, to construct qualifying integers below a given bound. We also report on some updated computations regarding open cases of the circulant Hadamard matrix problem.