Mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) play a key role in many protocols in quantum science, such as quantum key distribution. However, defining MUBs for arbitrary high-dimensional systems is theoretically difficult, and measurements in such bases can be hard to implement. We show experimentally that efficient quantum state reconstruction of a high-dimensional multipartite quantum system can be performed by considering only the MUBs of the individual parts. The state spaces of the individual subsystems are always smaller than the state space of the composite system. Thus, the benefit of this method is that MUBs need to be defined for the small Hilbert spaces of the subsystems rather than for the large space of the overall system. This becomes especially relevant where the definition or measurement of MUBs for the overall system is challenging. We illustrate this approach by implementing measurements for a high-dimensional system consisting of two photons entangled in the orbital angular momentum degree of freedom, and we reconstruct the state of this system for dimensions of the individual photons from d = 2 to 5.
In this contribution we relate two different key concepts: mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) and entanglement. We provide a general toolbox for analyzing and comparing entanglement of quantum states for different dimensions and numbers of particles. In particular we focus on bound entanglement, i.e. highly mixed states which cannot be distilled by local operations and classical communications. For a certain class of states—for which the state-space forms a ‘ magic ’ simplex—we analyze the set of bound entangled states detected by the MUB criterion for different dimensions d and number of particles n . We find that the geometry is similar for different d and n , consequently the MUB criterion opens possibilities to investigate the typicality of positivity under partial transposition (PPT)-bound and multipartite bound entanglement more deeply and provides a simple experimentally feasible tool to detect bound entanglement.
A few simply stated rules govern the entanglement patterns that can occur in mutually unbiased basis sets (MUBs) and constrain the combinations of such patterns that can coexist in full complements of MUBs. We consider Hilbert spaces of prime power dimensions (
D=pN), as realized by systems of
N prime-state particles, where full complements of
D+1 MUBs are known to exist, and we assume only that MUBs are eigenbases of generalized Pauli operators, without using any particular construction. The general rules include the following: (1) In any MUB, a given particle appears either in a pure state or totally entangled and (2) in any full MUB complement, each particle is pure in (
p+1) bases (not necessarily the same ones) and totally entangled in the remaining (${p}^{N}\ensuremath{-}p$). It follows that the maximum number of product bases is
p+1 and, when this number is realized, all remaining (${p}^{N}\ensuremath{-}p$) bases in the complement are characterized by the total entanglement of every particle. This ``standard distribution'' is inescapable for two-particle systems (of any
p), where only product and generalized Bell bases are admissible MUB types. This and the following results generalize previous results for qubits [Phys. Rev. A 65. 032320 (2002); Phys. Rev. A 72, 062310 (2005)] and qutrits [Phys. Rev. A 70, 012302 (2004)], drawing particularly upon [Phys. Rev. A 72, 062310 (2005)]. With three particles there are three MUB types, and these may be combined in (
p+2) different ways to form full complements. With
N=4, there are 6 MUB types for
p=2, but new MUB types become possible with larger
p, and these are essential to realizing full complements. With this example, we argue that new MUB types that show new entanglement patterns should enter with every step in
N and, also, when
N is a prime plus 1, at a critical
p value, $p=N\ensuremath{-}1$. Such MUBs should play critical roles in filling complements.
Abstract From a practical perspective it is advantageous to develop methods that verify entanglement in quantum states with as few measurements as possible. In this paper we investigate the minimal number of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) needed to detect bound entanglement in bipartite ( d × d ) -dimensional states, i.e. entangled states that are positive under partial transposition. In particular, we show that a class of entanglement witnesses (EWs) composed of MUBs can detect bound entanglement if the number of measurements is greater than d / 2 + 1 . This is a substantial improvement over other detection methods, requiring significantly fewer resources than either full quantum state tomography or measuring a complete set of d + 1 MUBs. Our approach is based on a partial characterisation of the (non-)decomposability of EWs. We show that non-decomposability is a universal property of MUBs, which holds regardless of the choice of complementary observables, and we find that both the number of measurements and the structure of the witness play an important role in the detection of bound entanglement.
A pair of orthonormal bases is called mutually unbiased if all mutual overlaps between any element of one basis and an arbitrary element of the other basis coincide. In case the dimension,
d, of the considered Hilbert space is a power of a prime number, complete sets of
d+1 mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) exist. Here we present a method based on the graph-state formalism to construct such sets of MUBs. We show that for
n p-level systems, with
p being prime, one particular graph suffices to easily construct a set of
pn+1 MUBs. In fact, we show that a single
n-dimensional vector, which is associated with this graph, can be used to generate a complete set of MUBs and demonstrate that this vector can be easily determined. Finally, we discuss some advantages of our formalism regarding the analysis of entanglement structures in MUBs, as well as experimental realizations.
We study an unextendible maximally entangled basis in arbitrary bipartite spaces. A systematic way of constructing a set of
d2 orthonormal maximally entangled states in ${\mathbb{C}}^{d}⨂{\mathbb{C}}^{{d}^{\ensuremath{'}}}(\frac{{d}^{\ensuremath{'}}}{2}<d<{d}^{\ensuremath{'}})$ is provided. The complementary space of the set of these
d2 orthonormal maximally entangled states contains no maximally entangled states that are orthogonal to all of them. Furthermore, we investigate mutually unbiased bases in which all the bases are unextendible maximally entangled ones. We present two unextendible maximally entangled bases in
C2⨂C3 which are mutually unbiased.