On Golay sequences

Abstract Golay sequences are two binary (+1, -1) sequences with nonperiodic autocorrelation function zero. These sequences have a wide range of applications in constructing orthogonal designs and Hadamard matrices, in coding theory, in multislit spectrometry and in surface acoustic wave devices. In this paper we develop an algorithm for constructing such sequences. We prove that Golay sequences of length n = 2 · 7 2 t do not exist and we give new proofs of some known results. In particular we show there are no Golay sequences of length 98. We conjecture that there are no Golay sequences of length 2 · q 2 t where q is not the sum of two integer squares.