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arXiv:1407.4074 · Journal of Mathematical Physics

States that “look the same” with respect to every basis in a mutually unbiased set

Ilya Amburg, Roshan Sharma, Daniel M. Sussman, William K. Wootters

Published Dec 1, 2014• 17 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A complete set of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) in a Hilbert space of dimension d defines a set of d + 1 orthogonal measurements. Relative to such a set, we define a MUB-balanced state to be a pure state for which the list of probabilities of the d outcomes of any of these measurements is independent of the choice of measurement, up to permutations. In this paper, we explicitly construct a MUB-balanced state for each prime power dimension d for which d = 3 (mod 4). These states have already been constructed by Appleby in unpublished notes, but our presentation here is different in that both the expression for the states themselves and the proof of MUB-balancedness are given in terms of the discrete Wigner function, rather than the density matrix or state vector. The discrete Wigner functions of these states are “rotationally symmetric” in a sense roughly analogous to the rotational symmetry of the energy eigenstates of a harmonic oscillator in the continuous two-dimensional phase space. Upon converting the Wigner function to a density matrix, we find that the states are expressible as real state vectors in the standard basis. We observe numerically that when d is large (and not a power of 3), a histogram of the components of such a state vector appears to form a semicircular distribution.

DOI
10.1063/1.4904317

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A complete set of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) in a Hilbert space of dimension d defines a set of d + 1 orthogonal measurements. Relative to such a set, we define a MUB-balanced state to be a pure state for which the list of probabilities of the d outcomes of any of these measurements is independent of the choice of measurement, up to permutations. In this paper, we explicitly construct a MUB-balanced state for each prime power dimension d for which d = 3 (mod 4). These states have already been constructed by Appleby in unpublished notes, but our presentation here is different in that both the expression for the states themselves and the proof of MUB-balancedness are given in terms of the discrete Wigner function, rather than the density matrix or state vector. The discrete Wigner functions of these states are “rotationally symmetric” in a sense roughly analogous to the rotational symmetry of the energy eigenstates of a harmonic oscillator in the continuous two-dimensional phase space. Upon converting the Wigner function to a density matrix, we find that the states are expressible as real state vectors in the standard basis. We observe numerically that when d is large (and not a power of 3), a histogram of the components of such a state vector appears to form a semicircular distribution.
The principle of complementarity lies at the heart of quantum mechanics. In finite dimensional quantum systems this principle is captured by pairs of observables which are given by mutually unbiased bases (MUBs). Two orthonormal bases B and C of Cd are mutually unbiased if |<b|c>|2 = 1/d holds for all vectors b ∈ B and c ∈ C. This implies that whenever we are given a vector from one of these bases and perform a measurement with respect to any other of the bases, then there is no information gained from this measurement. A basic question about MUBs is how many of them can be found in a given dimension d. While constructions of maximal sets of d+1 such bases are known for system of prime power dimension d, it is unknown whether this bound can be achieved for any non-prime power dimension. We review the known constructions of MUBs and demonstrate that maximal sets of MUBs come with a rich combinatorial structure by showing that they actually are the same objects as the complex projective 2-designs with angle set {0,1/d}. Furthermore, we address the problem of constructing positive operator-valued measures (POVMs) in finite dimension d consisting of d2 operators of rank one which have an inner product equal to uniform or very close to uniform. This is motivated by the related question of constructing symmetric informationally complete POVMs (SIC-POVMs) for which the inner products are perfectly uniform. We also give a simple proof of the fact that symmetric informationally complete POVMs are complex projective 2-designs with angle set {1/(d+1)}. Moreover, we show that MUBs and SIC-POVMs form uniform tight frames in Cd.
It is known that there exists 2N+ 1 mutually unbiased bases for N qubits system. Between the different MUB construction algorithms of the three-qubit case, we focus on Wootters method with discrete phase space that leads naturally to a complete set of 2N+ 1 mutually unbiased bases for the state space. We construct discrete Wigner function using mutually unbiased bases from the discrete phase space for three-qubit system by explicitly calculating the Wigner functions for exemplary three-qubit pure states such as the GHZ state, the W state and the embedded Bell state. We also highlight some quasi-probability characteristics of these entangled states.
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, ddd, of the considered Hilbert space is a power of a prime number, complete sets of d+1d+1d+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 nnn ppp-level systems, with ppp being prime, one particular graph suffices to easily construct a set of pn+1{p}^{n}+1pn+1 MUBs. In fact, we show that a single nnn-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.
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
Mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) describe quantum measurements for which certainty in one basis gives uniform outcomes in the others. Their maximum number remains unknown in dimensions that are not powers of a prime. We introduce an ansatz that, in many dimensions, allows us to construct more MUBs than have previously been found. Each basis in the ansatz consists of a diagonal phase matrix applied to a fixed unitary, which is a tensor product of Fourier matrices and, optionally, any real Hadamard matrix. This construction yields five MUBs in dimension 12, six in dimensions 48, 96, and 192, seven in dimensions 36 and 108, and ten in dimension 648. These bases can then be extended to exceed the tensor product bound, asymptotically, in every eighteenth dimension. Moreover, we show that Paley's real Hadamard matrix can be used to construct q+1q+1q+1 bases in dimension d=q(q+1)d = q(q+1)d=q(q+1) for every prime power q≡3(mod4)q\equiv3\pmod4q≡3(mod4). This count grows as d\sqrt dd​ and cannot be exceeded by tensor products of smaller sets.
A Galois unitary is a generalization of the notion of anti-unitary operators. They act only on those vectors in Hilbert space whose entries belong to some chosen number field. For Mutually Unbiased Bases the relevant number field is a cyclotomic field. By including Galois unitaries we are able to remove a mismatch between the finite projective group acting on the bases on the one hand, and the set of those permutations of the bases that can be implemented as transformations in Hilbert space on the other hand. In particular we show that there exist transformations that cycle through all the bases in all dimensions d = p^n where p is an odd prime and the exponent n is odd. (For even primes unitary MUB-cyclers exist.) These transformations have eigenvectors, which are MUB-balanced states (i.e. rotationally symmetric states in the original terminology of Wootters and Sussman) if and only if d = 3 modulo 4. We conjecture that this construction yields all such states in odd prime power dimension.