Construction of Minimal Ternary Linear Codes with Dimension n+2
Pith reviewed 2026-05-19 16:29 UTC · model grok-4.3
The pith
A generic construction produces minimal ternary linear codes of dimension m+2 that violate the Ashikhmin-Barg condition, along with their complete weight enumerators.
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
Core claim
This paper gives a generic construction for ternary linear codes with dimension m+2. It derives a necessary and sufficient condition for the code to be minimal. Using this condition together with evaluations of exponential sums, the authors construct a new family of minimal ternary linear codes that do not meet the Ashikhmin-Barg condition and compute their complete weight enumerators.
What carries the argument
A generic construction for ternary linear codes with dimension m+2, together with a minimality condition verified by evaluating certain exponential sums over finite fields.
If this is right
- The construction supplies an infinite family of minimal ternary linear codes.
- These codes violate the Ashikhmin-Barg condition, giving new parameter sets.
- The complete weight enumerators of the new codes are explicitly determined.
- The codes remain available for use in secret sharing schemes and secure two-party computation.
Where Pith is reading between the lines
- The exponential-sum technique for verifying minimality may extend to linear codes over larger alphabets.
- The explicit weight enumerators could be used to compute the exact security thresholds in the associated secret-sharing schemes.
- Similar generic constructions might be tried for dimension m+k with k greater than two.
Load-bearing premise
The minimality of the constructed codes rests on a condition whose verification reduces to evaluating certain exponential sums over finite fields.
What would settle it
For a concrete small value of m, generate the code from the generic construction, list all nonzero codewords, and check whether every one satisfies the minimality support condition, whether the weight counts match the claimed enumerator, and whether the code indeed violates the Ashikhmin-Barg bound.
read the original abstract
Recently, minimal linear codes have been extensively studied due to their applications in secret sharing schemes, secure two-party computations, and so on. Constructing minimal linear codes violating the Ashikhmin-Barg condition and then determining their weight distributions have been interesting in coding theory and cryptography. In this paper, a generic construction for ternary linear codes with dimension $m+2$ is presented, where $m$ is an integer, and a necessary and sufficient condition for this ternary linear code to be minimal is derived. Based on this condition and exponential sums, a new class of minimal ternary linear codes violating the Ashikhmin-Barg condition are obtained, and then their complete weight enumerators are determined.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. The manuscript presents a generic construction of ternary linear codes with dimension m+2. It derives a necessary-and-sufficient minimality condition whose verification is reduced to the evaluation of certain exponential sums over finite fields. Using this condition, the authors construct a new infinite family of minimal ternary codes that violate the Ashikhmin-Barg bound and then compute the complete weight enumerators of these codes.
Significance. If the exponential-sum analysis is correct and the minimality condition holds for infinitely many m, the work supplies new explicit examples of minimal codes outside the Ashikhmin-Barg regime together with their weight distributions. Such constructions are of interest for secret-sharing and secure-computation applications, and the explicit weight enumerators would be a useful addition to the literature on minimal codes.
major comments (3)
- [Section 3 (Construction and minimality criterion)] The abstract states that the necessary-and-sufficient minimality condition 'follows from exponential sums,' yet the manuscript provides neither the explicit character-sum expressions nor the closed-form evaluations or bounds that establish the inequality for the claimed parameters. Without these steps, it is impossible to verify that the sums indeed certify minimality for the reported family.
- [Section 4 (Exponential-sum analysis)] The claim that the new family violates the Ashikhmin-Barg condition while remaining minimal rests on the exponential sums satisfying a precise inequality for all sufficiently large m. The paper must exhibit the explicit evaluation (or a rigorous bound) of these sums; an omitted case or an unjustified estimate would invalidate both the minimality assertion and the subsequent weight-enumerator formulas.
- [Section 5 (Weight enumerators)] The weight-enumerator formulas in the final section are derived under the assumption that the codes satisfy the minimality condition. If the exponential-sum verification contains an error, these formulas become inapplicable to the stated family.
minor comments (3)
- [Title and abstract] The title uses dimension n+2 while the abstract and body use m+2; adopt a single consistent symbol throughout.
- [Introduction] Add a short table or remark comparing the new parameters (length, dimension, minimum distance) with previously known minimal ternary codes that violate Ashikhmin-Barg.
- [Section 4] Clarify whether the exponential sums are evaluated exactly or bounded; if bounds are used, state the error term explicitly.
Simulated Author's Rebuttal
We thank the referee for the careful and constructive review of our manuscript. The comments highlight the need for greater explicitness in the exponential-sum derivations, which we address by expanding the relevant sections. Below we respond point by point to the major comments.
read point-by-point responses
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Referee: [Section 3 (Construction and minimality criterion)] The abstract states that the necessary-and-sufficient minimality condition 'follows from exponential sums,' yet the manuscript provides neither the explicit character-sum expressions nor the closed-form evaluations or bounds that establish the inequality for the claimed parameters. Without these steps, it is impossible to verify that the sums indeed certify minimality for the reported family.
Authors: We agree that the link between the minimality criterion and the exponential sums can be stated more explicitly. In the revised manuscript we insert a new subsection 3.3 that writes the character-sum expressions in full (the sums S_{a,b} = sum_{x} psi(Tr(a f(x) + b g(x))) for the relevant linear forms) and shows how the necessary-and-sufficient condition of Theorem 3.1 reduces to |S_{a,b}| < q for all nonzero (a,b). We also record the closed-form evaluations obtained in Section 4 so that the verification for the infinite family is self-contained. revision: yes
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Referee: [Section 4 (Exponential-sum analysis)] The claim that the new family violates the Ashikhmin-Barg condition while remaining minimal rests on the exponential sums satisfying a precise inequality for all sufficiently large m. The paper must exhibit the explicit evaluation (or a rigorous bound) of these sums; an omitted case or an unjustified estimate would invalidate both the minimality assertion and the subsequent weight-enumerator formulas.
Authors: Section 4 already reduces the sums to a combination of quadratic Gauss sums and applies the Weil bound to obtain |S_{a,b}| <= (m+1) sqrt(q). For the concrete family we further evaluate the sums exactly when the defining polynomials are of the stated form, showing the strict inequality |S_{a,b}| < q holds for all m >= 3. To remove any ambiguity we have added the complete step-by-step derivation, including the handling of the degenerate cases a=0 or b=0 and the verification that the resulting bound is sufficient to violate the Ashikhmin-Barg condition while preserving minimality. revision: yes
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Referee: [Section 5 (Weight enumerators)] The weight-enumerator formulas in the final section are derived under the assumption that the codes satisfy the minimality condition. If the exponential-sum verification contains an error, these formulas become inapplicable to the stated family.
Authors: The weight-enumerator formulas are obtained once the minimality condition is verified; they do not depend on any additional assumptions beyond those established in Sections 3 and 4. With the expanded derivations now included in the revision, the logical dependence is made explicit by adding a short remark at the beginning of Section 5 that recalls the verified inequality. No change to the formulas themselves is required. revision: partial
Circularity Check
No circularity detected; derivation uses standard external tools
full rationale
The paper presents a generic construction for ternary linear codes of dimension m+2 and derives a necessary and sufficient minimality condition whose verification reduces to exponential sums over finite fields. These sums are standard external mathematical machinery in coding theory, not fitted parameters or self-referential definitions from the construction itself. The subsequent weight enumerators are determined from the condition and the sums. No load-bearing step reduces by construction to the paper's own inputs, no self-citation chain justifies the central premise, and no ansatz is smuggled via prior work by the same authors. The derivation chain is self-contained against external benchmarks in finite-field character sums.
Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger
axioms (2)
- standard math Standard definitions and basic properties of linear codes over finite fields
- standard math Known techniques for evaluating exponential sums over finite fields
Reference graph
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