Some spherical codes in S2 and their algebraic numbers

Randall L Rathbun, Wesley JM Ridgway

Published 2020-08-11Version 1

The first 195 spherical codes for the global minima of 1 to 65 points on S2 have been obtained for 3 types of potentials: logarithmic, Coulomb, called the Thomson problem, and the inverse square law, with 77, 38, and 38 digits precision respectively. It was discovered that certain point sets have embedded polygonal structures, constraining the points, enabling them to be parameterized and to successfully recover the algebraic polynomial. So far 49 algebraic number sets have been recovered, but 109 more remain to be recovered from their 1,622 parameters, 983 known to 50,014 digit precision. The very high algebraic degree of these minimal polynomials eludes finding the algebraic numbers from the spherical codes and requires new mathematical tools to meet this challenge.