The Propus Construction for Symmetric Hadamard Matrices

Abstract

\textit{Propus} (which means twins) is a construction method for orthogonal $\pm 1$ matrices based on a variation of the Williamson array called the \textit{propus array} \[ \begin{matrix*}[r] A& B & B & D B& D & -A &-B B& -A & -D & B D& -B & B &-A. \end{matrix*} \] This construction designed to find symmetric Hadamard matrices was originally based on circulant symmetric $\pm 1$ matrices, called \textit{propus matrices}. We also give another construction based on symmetric Williamson-type matrices. We give constructions to find symmetric propus-Hadamard matrices for 57 orders $4n$, $n < 200$ odd. We give variations of the above array to allow for more general matrices than symmetric Williamson propus matrices. One such is the \textit{ Generalized Propus Array (GP)}.