A sensitive algorithm for detecting the inequivalence of Hadamard matrices

A Hadamard matrix of side n is an n x n matrix with every entry either 1 or -1, which satisfies HHT = nI. Two Hadamard matrices are called equivalent if one can be obtained from the other by some sequence of row and column permutations and negations. To identify the equivalence of two Hadamard matrices by a complete search is known to be an NP hard problem when n increases. In this paper, a new algorithm for detecting inequivalence of two Hadamard matrices is proposed, which is more sensitive than those known in the literature and which has a close relation with several measures of uniformity. As an application, we apply the new algorithm to verify the inequivalence of the known 60 inequivalent Hadamard matrices of order 24; furthermore, we show that there are at least 382 pairwise inequivalent Hadamard matrices of order 36. The latter is a new discovery.