On the construction of highly symmetric tight frames and complex polytopes

Many “highly symmetric” configurations of vectors in Cd, such as the vertices of the platonic solids and the regular complex polytopes, are equal-norm tight frames by virtue of being the orbit of the irreducible unitary action of their symmetry group. For nonabelian groups there are uncountably many such tight frames up to unitary equivalence. The aim of this paper is to single out those orbits which are particularly nice, such as those which are the vertices of a complex polytope. This is done by defining a finite class of tight frames of n vectors for Cd (n and d fixed) which we call the highly symmetric tight frames. We outline how these frames can be calculated from the representations of abstract groups using a computer algebra package. We give numerous examples, with a special emphasis on those obtained from the (Shephard-Todd) finite reflection groups. The interrelationships between these frames with complex polytopes, harmonic frames, equiangular tight frames, and Heisenberg frames (maximal sets of equiangular lines) are explored in detail.