Mutually unbiased unit Hadamard (MUUH) matrices have been studied for almost 40 years. Recent interest in such matrices has been motivated by their applications to quantum information theory. In this paper, we introduce the class of mutually unbiased complex Hadamard (MUCH) matrices having as sntries fourth roots of unity. The number of MUCH matrices of order 2n, n odd, is at most 2, and the bound is attained for n = 1,5,9. Certain pairs of mutually unbiased complex Hadamard matrices of order m can be used to construct pairs of unbiased real Hadamard matrices of order 2m. We then turn our attention to the class of mutually unbiased real Hadamard matrices of order 16n2which seem to be the most interesting ones. Mutually unbiased weighing (MUW) matrices are introduced for the first time. Further study of these objects look quite promising.
We investigate the number of real entries of an n×n complex Hadamard matrix. We analytically derive the numbers when n = 2, 3, 4, 6. In particular, the number can be any one of 0–22, 24, 25, 26, 30 for n = 6. We apply our result to the existence of four mutually unbiased bases in dimension six, which is a long-standing open problem in quantum physics and information. We show that if four MUBs containing the identity matrix exist then the real entries in any one of the remaining three matrices do not exceed 22.
We prove the following two results relating real mutually unbiased bases and representations of finite groups of odd order. Let
q be a power of 2 and
r a positive integer. Then we can find a
q2r×q2r real orthogonal matrix
D, say, of multiplicative order
q2r−1+1, whose
q2r−1+1 powers
D, \dots,
Dq2r−1+1=I define
q2r−1+1 mutually unbiased bases in
Rq2r. Thus the scaled matrices
qrD, \dots,
qrDq2r−1 are
q2r−1 different Hadamard matrices. When we take
q=2, we achieve the maximum number of real mutually unbiased bases in dimension
22r using the elements of a cyclic group. We also prove the following. Let
G be an arbitrary finite group of odd order
2k+1, where
k≥3. Then
G has a real representation
R, say, of degree
22k−1 such that the elements
R(σ),
σ∈G, define
∣G∣ mutually unbiased bases in
Rd, where
d=22k−1. In addition, a group of order 5 defines five real mutually unbiased bases in
R16 and a group of order 3 defines three real mutually unbiased bases in
R4. Thus, an arbitrary group of odd order has a faithful representation by real scaled Hadamard matrices of 2-power size.
We report on a search for mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) in six dimensions. We find only triplets of MUBs, and thus do not come close to the theoretical upper bound 7. However, we point out that the natural habitat for sets of MUBs is the set of all complex Hadamard matrices of the given order, and we introduce a natural notion of distance between bases in Hilbert space. This allows us to draw a detailed map of where in the landscape the MUB triplets are situated. We use available tools, such as the theory of the discrete Fourier transform, to organize our results. Finally, we present some evidence for the conjecture that there exists a four dimensional family of complex Hadamard matrices of order 6. If this conjecture is true the landscape in which one may search for MUBs is much larger than previously thought.
A pair of orthonormal bases are mutually unbiased (MU) if the inner products across all their elements have equal magnitude. In quantum mechanics, these bases represent observables that are complementary, i.e. a measurement of one observable implies maximal uncertainty about the possible outcome of a subsequent measurement of a second observable. MU bases have attracted interest in recent years because their properties seem to depend dramatically on the dimension d of the quantum system in hand. If the dimension is given by a prime or prime-power, the state space is known to accommodate a complete set of d+1 MU bases. However, for composite dimensions, such as d = 6, 10, 12, ..., complete sets seem to be absent and it is not understood why. In this thesis we carry out a comprehensive study of MU product bases in dimension six. In particular, we construct all MU bases in dimension six consisting of product states only. The exhaustive classification leads to several non-existence results. We also present a new construction of complex Hadamard matrices of composite order, which is a consequence of our work on MU product bases. Based on this construction we obtain several new isolated Hadamard matrices of Butson-type. \n
In this note I point out that (1) pairs of real mutually unbiased bases (i.e., orthonormal bases of R^d) can only exist in dimensions 2 or d where d is a multiple of 4 and that (2) triples of real mutually unbiased bases can only exist for dimensions d that are also squares. For the case d=2^{2m} the maximal number of real MUBs is given by (d+2)/2 (this follows from known results on extremal euclidean line-sets). In the case d=s^2 where s is an even number that is not a power of 2, we have the lower bound N_MOLS(s)+2, where N_MOLS(s) denotes the maximal number of mutually orthogonal Latin square of order s, provided that there exists a Hadamard matrix of size s. It is not known how good this bound is. Moreover, I observe that the question of deciding if there always two real MUBs is equivalent to the Hadamard conjecture.