Equiangular lines with a fixed angle

Abstract

Solving a longstanding problem on equiangular lines, we determine, for each given fixed angle and in all sufficiently large dimensions, the maximum number of lines pairwise separated by the given angle.

Fix $0 < \alpha < 1$. Let $N_\alpha (d)$ denote the maximum number of lines through the origin in $\mathbb {R}^d$ with pairwise common angle arccos$\alpha$. Let $k$ denote the minimum number (if it exists) of vertices in a graph whose adjacency matrix has spectral radius exactly $(1-\alpha )/(2\alpha )$. If $k < \infty $, then $N_\alpha (d) = \lfloor k(d-1)/(k-1) \rfloor $ for all sufficiently large $d$, and otherwise $N_\alpha (d) = d + o(d)$. In particular, $N_{1/(2k-1)}(d) = \lfloor k(d-1)/(k-1) \rfloor $ for every integer $k\ge 2$ and all sufficiently large $d$. A key ingredient is a new result in spectral graph theory: the adjacency matrix of a connected bounded degree graph has sublinear second eigenvalue multiplicity.