New asymptotic bounds for self-dual codes and lattices

Eric M. Rains

Published 2001-04-12Version 1

We give an independent proof of the Krasikov-Litsyn bound d/n<~(1-5^{-1/4})/2 on doubly-even self-dual binary codes. The technique used (a refinement of the Mallows-Odlyzko-Sloane approach) extends easily to other families of self-dual codes, modular lattices, and quantum codes; in particular, we show that the Krasikov-Litsyn bound applies to singly-even binary codes, and obtain an analogous bound for unimodular lattices. We also show that in each case, our bound differs from the true optimum by an amount growing faster than O(n^{1/2}).