On Euler’s magic matrices of sizes 3 and 8
Volume 222 / 2026
Acta Arithmetica 222 (2026), 71-82
MSC: Primary 11C20; Secondary 15B36
DOI: 10.4064/aa250422-2-8
Published online: 23 December 2025
Abstract
A proper Euler’s magic matrix is an integer $n\times n$ matrix $M\in \mathbb Z^{n\times n}$ such that $M\cdot M^t=\gamma \cdot I$ for some nonzero constant $\gamma $, the sum of the squares of the entries along each of the two main diagonals equals $\gamma $, and the squares of all entries in $M$ are pairwise distinct. Euler constructed such matrices for $n=4$. In this work, we use multiplication matrices of the octonions to construct examples for $n=8$, and prove that no such matrix exists for $n=3$.
Published in Open Access (under CC-BY license).