Despite being pursued with a lot of dedication in frame theory and quantum information theory, maximal equiangular tight frames have only been confirmed to exist for lowest dimensions. This is especially puzzling since maximal sets of mutually unbiased bases, which are also known to be optimal packings but have a slightly larger number of vectors, are known to exist in complex Hilbert spaces of any prime power dimension. This talk presents a method by which we can construct a set of $M^2+1$ vectors in $M$ complex dimensions that form a tight complex orthoplectic Grassmannian frame that is in addition related to a weighted complex projective 2-design with optimality properties for quantum state tomography.
Despite being pursued with a lot of dedication in frame theory and quantum information theory, maximal equiangular tight frames have only been confirmed to exist for lowest dimensions. This is especially puzzling since maximal sets of mutually unbiased bases, which are also known to be optimal packings but have a slightly larger number of vectors, are known to exist in complex Hilbert spaces of any prime power dimension. This talk presents a method by which we can construct a set of M2+1 vectors in M complex dimensions that form a tight complex orthoplectic Grassmannian frame that is in addition related to a weighted complex projective 2-design with optimality properties for quantum state tomography.
Two orthonormal bases in the complex space of dimension d, are said to be mutually unbiased if the square of the magnitude of the inner product of any vector from one basis with any vector in other basis is equal to the reciprocal of the dimension d. Mutually unbiased bases are used for optimal state determination of mixed quantum states. It is known that in any dimension d, the number of mutually unbiased bases is at most d+1. Ivanovic found a complete set of mutually unbiased bases for prime dimensions. His construction was generalized by Wootters and Fields for prime power dimensions. There is a strong connection between maximally commuting bases of orthogonal unitary matrices and mutually unbiased bases. Based on this connection, there exits a constructive proof of the existence of a complete set of mutually unbiased bases for prime power dimensions. This thesis is an exploration on construction of mutually unbiased bases.
In this work, the concept of mutually unbiased frames is introduced as the most general notion of unbiasedness for sets composed by linearly independent and normalized vectors. It encompasses the already existing notions of unbiasedness for orthonormal bases, regular simplices, equiangular tight frames, positive operator valued measure, and also includes symmetric informationally complete quantum measurements. After introducing the tool, its power is shown by finding the following results about the last mentioned class of constellations: (i) real fiducial states do not exist in any even dimension, and (ii) unknown d -dimensional fiducial states are parameterized, a priori, with roughly 3d/2 real variables only, without loss of generality. Furthermore, multi-parametric families of pure quantum states having minimum uncertainty with regard to several choices of d+1 orthonormal bases are shown, in every dimension d . These last families contain all existing fiducial states in every finite dimension, and the bases include maximal sets of d+1 mutually unbiased bases, when d is a prime number.
Abstract A frame is a generalization of a basis of a vector space to a redundant overspanning set whose vectors are linearly dependent. Frames find applications in signal processing and quantum information theory. We present a genetic algorithm that can generate maximally orthogonal frames (MOFs) of arbitrary size n in d-dimensional complex space. First, we formalize the concept of MOF and demonstrate that it depends on the choice of an energy function to weigh the different pairwise overlaps between vectors. Then, we discuss the relation between different energy functions and well-known frame varieties such as tight and Grassmannian frames and complex projective p-designs. Obtaining MOFs poses a global non-convex minimization problem. We discuss the relation with established numerical problems such as the Thomson problem and the problem of finding optimal packings in complex projective space. To tackle the minimization, we design a hybrid genetic algorithm that features local optimization of the parents. To assess the performance of the algorithm, we propose two visualization techniques that allow us to analyze the coherence and uniformity of high-dimensional frames. The genetic algorithm is able to produce highly-symmetric universal frames, such as equiangular tight frames, symmetric, informationally complete, positive operator-valued measurements and maximal sets of mutually unbiased bases, for configurations of up to d = 6 and n = 36, with runtimes of the order of several minutes on a regular desktop computer for the largest configurations.
The question of how well a finite ensemble of quantum states can approximate Haar randomness is relevant in many areas of quantum physics. Here we consider this problem from a geometrical perspective, via the notion of Welch bounds. The latter are a set of inequalities, originally derived in the context of signal processing, which precisely characterize exact k-designs, i.e. a finite ensemble of states that exactly reproduces the k-th moment of the Haar measure. We derive stronger Welch bounds which enable a quantitative and operationally meaningful characterisation of approximate k-designs. Our new bounds are often tight, allowing us to characterize optimal approximate designs in regimes where the cardinality of the ensemble is small. A notable example is complete sets of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs), which form an optimal approximate 3-design among 1-designs of their cardinality. This leads to a new variational approach to determine the existence of complete sets of MUBs, which we explore numerically in dimension six. We highlight a connection to shadow tomography, relating our bounds to the shadow norm. We comment on how the method extends to other types of designs, including toric and unitary designs. A key technical ingredient, is the computation of the complete spectrum of the partially transposed symmetric-subspace projector, including multiplicities and eigenvectors, which may find further applications.
We consider sets of trace-normalized non-negative operators in Hilbert–Schmidt balls that maximize their mutual Hilbert–Schmidt distance; these are optimal arrangements in the sets of purity-limited classical or quantum states on a finite-dimensional Hilbert space. Classical states are understood to be represented by diagonal matrices, with the diagonal entries forming a probability vector. We also introduce the concept of spectrahedron arrangements which provides a unified framework for classical and quantum arrangements and the flexibility to define new types of optimal packings. Continuing a prior work, we combine combinatorial structures and line packings associated with frames to arrive at optimal arrangements of higher rank quantum states. One new construction that is presented involves generating an optimal arrangement we call a Gabor–Steiner equiangular tight frame as the orbit of a projective representation of the Weyl–Heisenberg group over any finite abelian group. The minimal sets of linearly dependent vectors, the so-called binder, of the Gabor–Steiner equiangular tight frames are then characterized; under certain conditions, these form combinatorial block designs and in one case generate a new class of block designs. The projections onto the span of minimal linearly dependent sets in the Gabor–Steiner equiangular tight frame are then used to generate further optimal spectrahedron arrangements.
Toric t -designs, or equivalently t -designs on the diagonal subgroup of the unitary group, are sets of points on the torus over which sums reproduce integrals of degree t monomials over the full torus. Motivated by the projective structure of quantum mechanics, we develop the notion of t -designs on the projective torus, which have a much more restricted structure than their counterparts on full tori. We provide various new constructions of toric and projective toric designs and prove bounds on their size. We draw connections between projective toric designs and a diverse set of mathematical objects, including difference and Sidon sets from the field of additive combinatorics, symmetric, informationally complete positive operator valued measures and complete sets of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) from quantum information theory, and crystal ball sequences of certain root lattices. Using these connections, we prove bounds on the maximal size of dense Btmodm sets. We also use projective toric designs to construct families of quantum state designs. In particular, we construct families of (uniformly-weighted) quantum state 2 -designs in dimension d of size exactly d(d+1) that do not form complete sets of MUBs, thereby disproving a conjecture concerning the relationship between designs and MUBs (Zhu 2015). We then propose a modification of Zhu's conjecture and discuss potential paths towards proving this conjecture. We prove a fundamental distinction between complete sets of MUBs in prime-power dimensions versus in dimension 6 (and, we conjecture, in all non-prime-power dimensions), the distinction relating to group structure of the corresponding projective toric design. Finally, we discuss many open questions about the properties of these projective toric designs and how they relate to other questions in number theory, geometry, and quantum information.