Signed magic arrays: existence and constructions (2410.04101v1)

Abstract: Let $m,n,s,k$ be four integers such that $1\leqslant s \leqslant n$, $1\leqslant k\leqslant m$ and $ms=nk$. A signed magic array $SMA(m,n; s,k)$ is an $m\times n$ partially filled array whose entries belong to the subset $\Omega\subset \mathbb{Z}$, where $\Omega={0,\pm 1, \pm 2,\ldots, \pm (nk-1)/2}$ if $nk$ is odd and $\Omega={\pm 1, \pm 2, \ldots, \pm nk/2}$ if $nk$ is even, satisfying the following requirements: $(a)$ every $\omega \in \Omega$ appears once in the array; $(b)$ each row contains exactly $s$ filled cells and each column contains exactly $k$ filled cells; $(c)$ the sum of the elements in each row and in each column is $0$. In this paper we construct these arrays when $n$ is even and $s,k\geqslant 5$ are odd coprime integers. This allows us to give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of an $SMA(m,n; s,k)$ for all admissible values of $m,n,s,k$.