This short note reviews the notion and fundamental properties of SIC-POVM and its connection with the length of separable states. We also review the t-design.
Symmetric informationally complete (SIC) positive operator valued measures (POVMs) are a class of quantum measurements which, in addition to being informationally complete, satisfy three conditions: (1) every POVM element is rank one, (2) the Hilbert-Schmidt inner product between any two distinct elements is constant, and (3) the trace of each element is constant. The third condition is often overlooked, since it may give the impression that it follows trivially from the second. We show that this condition cannot be removed, as it leads to two distinct values for the trace of an element of the POVM. This observation has led us to define a broader class of measurements which we call semi-SIC POVMs. In dimension two, we show that semi-SIC POVMs exist, and we construct the entire family. In higher dimensions, we characterize key properties and applications of semi-SIC POVMs, and note that the proof of their existence remains open.
We construct the set of all general (i.e. not necessarily rank 1) symmetric informationally complete (SIC) positive operator valued measures (POVMs). In particular, we show that any orthonormal basis of a real vector space of dimension corresponds to some general SIC POVM and vice versa. Our constructed set of all general SIC POVMs contains weak SIC POVMs for which each POVM element can be made arbitrarily close to a multiple times the identity. On the other hand, it remains open if for all finite dimensions our constructed family contains a rank 1 SIC POVM.
We construct the set of all general (i.e. not necessarily rank 1) symmetric informationally complete (SIC) positive operator valued measures (POVMs). In particular, we show that any orthonormal basis of a real vector space of dimension d^2-1 corresponds to some general SIC POVM and vice versa. Our constructed set of all general SIC-POVMs contains weak SIC-POVMs for which each POVM element can be made arbitrarily close to a multiple times the identity. On the other hand, it remains open if for all finite dimensions our constructed family contains a rank 1 SIC-POVM.