The two observables are incompatible if they cannot be measured simultaneously; however, they become maximally incompatible (complementary) if their eigenstates are mutually unbiased. Only then does the measurement of one observable give no information about the other observable. The spin projection operators onto three mutually orthogonal directions are complementary only for spin 1/2. For higher spin numbers the corresponding eigenstates are no longer unbiased. In this work we examine the properties of spin 1 mutually unbiased bases (MUB) and look for the physical meaning of the corresponding operators. We show that if the computational basis is chosen to be the eigenbasis of the spin projection operator along some direction z , then all the states, which are unbiased to this basis, have to be squeezed. Next, we study the generation and the measurement of MUB states by introducing the Fourier-like transform through spin squeezing. Finally, we try to ascribe some classical interpretation to the operators corresponding to MUB and study what information the observer gains while measuring them. Higher spin numbers are also considered.
The two observables are incompatible if they cannot be measured simultaneously; however, they become maximally incompatible (complementary) if their eigenstates are mutually unbiased. Only then does the measurement of one observable give no information about the other observable. The spin projection operators onto three mutually orthogonal directions are complementary only for spin 1/2. For higher spin numbers the corresponding eigenstates are no longer unbiased. In this work we examine the properties of spin 1 mutually unbiased bases (MUB) and look for the physical meaning of the corresponding operators. We show that if the computational basis is chosen to be the eigenbasis of the spin projection operator along some direction z , then all the states, which are unbiased to this basis, have to be squeezed. Next, we study the generation and the measurement of MUB states by introducing the Fourier-like transform through spin squeezing. Finally, we try to ascribe some classical interpretation to the operators corresponding to MUB and study what information the observer gains while measuring them. Higher spin numbers are also considered.
Mutually unbiased bases (MUBs), which are such that the inner product between two vectors in different orthogonal bases is constant equal to the inverse 1/d, with d the dimension of the finite Hilbert space, are becoming more and more studied for applications such as quantum tomography and cryptography, and in relation to entangled states and to the Heisenberg-Weil group of quantum optics. Complete sets of MUBs of cardinality d+1 have been derived for prime power dimensions d=pm using the tools of abstract algebra (Wootters in 1989, Klappenecker in 2003). Presumably, for non prime dimensions the cardinality is much less. The bases can be reinterpreted as quantum phase states, i.e. as eigenvectors of Hermitean phase operators generalizing those introduced by Pegg & Barnett in 1989. The MUB states are related to additive characters of Galois fields (in odd characteristic p) and of Galois rings (in characteristic 2). Quantum Fourier transforms of the components in vectors of the bases define a more general class of MUBs with multiplicative characters and additive ones altogether. We investigate the complementary properties of the above phase operator with respect to the number operator. We also study the phase probability distribution and variance for physical states and find them related to the Gauss sums, which are sums over all elements of the field (or of the ring) of the product of multiplicative and additive characters. Finally we relate the concepts of mutual unbiasedness and maximal entanglement. This allows to use well studied algebraic concepts as efficient tools in our quest of minimal uncertainty in quantum information primitives.
Mutually unbiased bases (MUBs), which are such that the inner product between two vectors in different orthogonal bases is a constant equal to 1/sqrt{d), with d the dimension of the finite Hilbert space, are becoming more and more studied for applications such as quantum tomography and cryptography, and in relation to entangled states and to the Heisenberg-Weil group of quantum optics. Complete sets of MUBs of cardinality d+1 have been derived for prime power dimensions d=p^m using the tools of abstract algebra. Presumably, for non prime dimensions the cardinality is much less. Here we reinterpret MUBs as quantum phase states, i.e. as eigenvectors of Hermitean phase operators generalizing those introduced by Pegg & Barnett in 1989. We relate MUB states to additive characters of Galois fields (in odd characteristic p) and to Galois rings (in characteristic 2). Quantum Fourier transforms of the components in vectors of the bases define a more general class of MUBs with multiplicative characters and additive ones altogether. We investigate the complementary properties of the above phase operator with respect to the number operator. We also study the phase probability distribution and variance for general pure quantum electromagnetic states and find them to be related to the Gauss sums, which are sums over all elements of the field (or of the ring) of the product of multiplicative and additive characters. Finally, we relate the concepts of mutual unbiasedness and maximal entanglement. This allows to use well studied algebraic concepts as efficient tools in the study of entanglement and its information aspects
Abstract We consider the state determination problem using mutually unbiased bases (MUBs). For spin-1, spin-3/2 and spin-2 systems, analogous to Pauli operators of spin-1/2 system, which are experimentally implementable and correspond to the optimum measurement in characterizing the density matrix, we describe a procedure to construct an orthonormal set of operators from MUBs. The constructed operators are maximally commuting, can be physically realized, and correspond to physical observables. The method of construction is general enough to allow for extensions to higher-dimensional spin systems and arbitrary density matrices in finite dimensions for which MUBs are known to exist.
In quantum information, complementarity of quantum mechanical observables plays a key role. The eigenstates of two complementary observables form a pair of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs). More generally, a set of MUBs consists of bases that are all pairwise unbiased. Except for specific dimensions of the Hilbert space, the maximal sets of MUBs are unknown in general. Even for a dimension as low as six, the identification of a maximal set of MUBs remains an open problem, although there is strong numerical evidence that no more than three simultaneous MUBs do exist. Here, by exploiting a newly developed holographic technique, we implement and test different sets of three MUBs for a single photon six-dimensional quantum state (a "qusix"), encoded exploiting polarization and orbital angular momentum of photons. A close agreement is observed between theory and experiments. Our results can find applications in state tomography, quantitative wave-particle duality, quantum key distribution.
Quantum measurements based on mutually unbiased bases are commonly used in quantum information processing, as they are generally viewed as being maximally incompatible and complementary. Here we quantify precisely the degree of incompatibility of mutually unbiased bases (MUB) using the notion of noise robustness. Specifically, for sets of k MUB in dimension d, we provide upper and lower bounds on this quantity. Notably, we get a tight bound in several cases, in particular for complete sets of k=d+1 MUB (using the standard construction for d being a prime power). On the way, we also derive a general upper bound on the noise robustness for an arbitrary set of quantum measurements. Moreover, we prove the existence of sets of k MUB that are operationally inequivalent, as they feature different noise robustness, and we provide a lower bound on the number of such inequivalent sets up to dimension 32. Finally, we discuss applications of our results for Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering.
Mutually unbiased bases capture perfect complementarity between two quantum measurements. Extensions beyond pairwise unbiasedness have been proposed, but essentially no non-trivial higher-order constructions are known. We introduce k-fold unbiased measurements (k-UMs), extending the k-fold unbiased bases notion of [arXiv:1706.04446] from rank-one basis measurements to arbitrary-rank projective measurements, and show that this higher-rank setting supports a much richer theory. We develop the notions of algebraic and spectral k-UMs and prove that they coincide for rank-one measurements and triples of measurements (3-UMs). We establish strong no-go results for higher-order rank-one constructions and three-outcome 3-UMs, but obtain infinitely many higher-rank triples using Hadamard matrices and Clifford algebras. We then give these structures an exact operational interpretation in terms of measurement incompatibility. For 3-UMs with any number of outcomes, we determine their generalised incompatibility robustness exactly and construct an explicit joint measurement for their noisy versions at the compatibility threshold. Finally, we implement the symmetry reduction of the sum-of-squares hierarchy recently introduced in [New J. Phys. 28, 064509 (2026)] and give numerical evidence that the noise thresholds arising from the k-UM analysis may characterise the asymptotic behaviour of this hierarchy. In particular, with very high precision, we numerically show that our constructed four-outcome 3-UMs are among the most incompatible triples of four-outcome measurements.