Complex Hadamard matrices and the Spectral Set Conjecture

Abstract

By analyzing the connection between complex Hadamard matrices and spectral sets we prove the direction ``spectral -> tile'' of the Sectral Set Conjecture for all sets A of size at most 5 in any finite Abelian group. This result is then extended to the infinite grid $\Z^d$ for any dimension d, and finally to Euclidean space. It was pointed out recently by Tao that the corresponding statement fails for |A|=6 in the group $\Z_3^5$, and this observation quickly led to the failure of the Spectral Set Conjecture in $\R^5$ (Tao), and subsequently in $\R^4$ (Matolcsi). In the second part of this note we reduce this dimension further, showing that the direction ``spectral -> tile'' of the Spectral Set Conjecture is false already in dimension 3. In a computational search for counterexamples in lower dimension (one and two) one needs, at the very least, to be able to decide efficiently if a set is a tile (in, say, a cyclic group) and if it is spectral. Such efficient procedures are lacking however and we make a few comments for the computational complexity of some related problems.