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Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

SICs and the elements of order three in the Clifford group

Len Bos, Shayne F. D. Waldron

Published Jan 18, 2019• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract For over a decade, there has been intensive work on the numerical and analytic construction of SICs ( d 2 equiangular lines in ) as an orbit of the Heisenberg group. The Clifford group, which consists of the unitary matrices which normalise the Heisenberg group, plays a key role in these constructions. All of the known fiducial (generating) vectors for such SICs are eigenvectors of symplectic operations in the Clifford group with canonical order 3. Here we describe the Clifford group and the subgroup of symplectic operations in terms of a natural set of generators. From this, we classify all its elements of canonical order three. In particular, we show (contrary to prior claims) that there are symplectic operations of canonical order 3 for , which are not conjugate to the Zauner matrix. It is as yet unknown whether these give rise to SICs.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8121/aafff3

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Abstract For over a decade, there has been intensive work on the numerical and analytic construction of SICs ( d 2 equiangular lines in ) as an orbit of the Heisenberg group. The Clifford group, which consists of the unitary matrices which normalise the Heisenberg group, plays a key role in these constructions. All of the known fiducial (generating) vectors for such SICs are eigenvectors of symplectic operations in the Clifford group with canonical order 3. Here we describe the Clifford group and the subgroup of symplectic operations in terms of a natural set of generators. From this, we classify all its elements of canonical order three. In particular, we show (contrary to prior claims) that there are symplectic operations of canonical order 3 for , which are not conjugate to the Zauner matrix. It is as yet unknown whether these give rise to SICs.
We describe the structure of the extended Clifford group [defined to be the group consisting of all operators, unitary and antiunitary, which normalize the generalized Pauli group (or Weyl–Heisenberg group as it is often called)]. We also obtain a number of results concerning the structure of the Clifford group proper (i.e., the group consisting just of the unitary operators which normalize the generalized Pauli group). We then investigate the action of the extended Clifford group operators on symmetric informationally complete–positive operator valued measures (or SIC–POVMs) covariant relative to the action of the generalized Pauli group. We show that each of the fiducial vectors which has been constructed so far (including all the vectors constructed numerically by Renes et al.) is an eigenvector of one of a special class of order 3 Clifford unitaries. This suggests a strengthening of a conjecture of Zauner’s. We give a complete characterization of the orbits and stability groups in dimensions 2–7. Finally, we show that the problem of constructing fiducial vectors may be expected to simplify in the infinite sequence of dimensions 7,13,19,21,31,… . We illustrate this point by constructing exact expressions for fiducial vectors in dimensions 7 and 19.
The problem of existence of symmetric informationally-complete positive operator-valued measures (SICs for short) in every dimension is known as Zauner's conjecture and remains open to this day. Most of the known SIC examples are constructed as an orbit of the Weyl-Heisenberg group action. It appears that in these cases SICs are invariant under the so-called canonical order-three unitaries, which define automorphisms of the Weyl-Heisenberg group. In this note, we show that those order-three unitaries appear in projective unitary representations of the triangle group (3,3,3)(3,3,3)(3,3,3). We give a full description of such representations and show how it can be used to obtain results about the structure of canonical order-three unitaries. In particular, we present an alternative way of proving the fact that any canonical order-three unitary is conjugate to Zauner's unitary if the dimension d>3d>3d>3 is prime.
The generalized Pauli group and its normalizer, the Clifford group, have a rich mathematical structure which is relevant to the problem of constructing symmetric informationally complete POVMs (SIC-POVMs). To date, almost every known SIC-POVM fiducial vector is an eigenstate of a ‘canonical’ unitary in the Clifford group. I show that every canonical unitary in prime dimensions p > 3 lies in the same conjugacy class of the Clifford group and give a class representative for all such dimensions. It follows that if even one such SIC-POVM fiducial vector is an eigenvector of such a unitary, then all of them are (for a given such dimension). I also conjecture that in all dimensions d , the number of conjugacy classes is bounded above by 3 and depends only on d mod9, and I support this claim with computer computations in all dimensions <48.
The generalized Pauli group and its normalizer, the Clifford group, have a rich mathematical structure which is relevant to the problem of constructing symmetric informationally complete POVMs (SIC-POVMs). To date, every known SIC-POVM fiducial vector is an eigenstate of an order 3 unitary in the Clifford group. I show that every order 3 unitary in prime dimensions p > 3 lies in the same conjugacy class of the Clifford group and construct a class representative for all such dimensions. It follows that if even one such SIC-POVM fiducial vector is an eigenvector of such a unitary, then all of them are (for a given such dimension). I also conjecture that in all dimensions d, the number of conjugacy classes is bounded above by 3 and depends only on d mod 9, and I support this claim with numerical evidence.
Five years ago, Lane Hughston showed that some of the symmetric informationally complete positive operator valued measures (SICs) in dimension 3 coincide with the Hesse configuration (a structure well known to algebraic geometers, which arises from the torsion points of a certain elliptic curve). This connection with elliptic curves is signalled by the presence of linear dependencies among the SIC vectors. Here we look for analogous connections between SICs and algebraic geometry by performing computer searches for linear dependencies in higher dimensional SICs. We prove that linear dependencies will always emerge in Weyl–Heisenberg orbits when the fiducial vector lies in a certain subspace of an order 3 unitary matrix. This includes SICs when the dimension is divisible by 3 or equal to 8 mod 9. We examine the linear dependencies in dimension 6 in detail and show that smaller dimensional SICs are contained within this structure, potentially impacting the SIC existence problem. We extend our results to look for linear dependencies in orbits when the fiducial vector lies in an eigenspace of other elements of the Clifford group that are not order 3. Finally, we align our work with recent studies on representations of the Clifford group.
We consider a version of the extended Clifford Group which is defined in terms of a finite Galois field in odd prime power dimension. We show that Neuhauser's result, that with the appropriate choice of phases the standard (or metaplectic) representation of the discrete symplectic group is faithful also holds for the anti-unitary operators of the extended group. We also improve on Neuhauser's result by giving explicit formulae for the (anti-)unitary corresponding to an arbitrary (anti-)symplectic matrix. We then go on to find the eigenvalues and the order of an arbitrary (anti-)symplectic matrix. The fact that in prime power dimension the matrix elements belong to a field means that this can be done using the same techniques which are used to find the eigenvalues of a matrix defined over the reals-including the use of an extension field (the analogue of the complex numbers) when the eigenvalues are not in the base field. We then give an application of these results to SIC-POVMs (symmetric informationally complete positive operator valued measures). We show that in prime dimension our results can be used to find a natural basis for the eigenspace of the Zauner unitary in which SIC-fiducials are expected to lie. Finally, we apply our results to the MUB cycling problem. We show that in odd prime power dimension d, although there is no Clifford unitary, there is a Clifford anti-unitary which cycles through the full set of Wootters-Fields MUBs if d=3 (mod 4). Also, irrespective of whether d=1 or 3 (mod 4), the Wootters-Fields MUBs split into two groups of (d+1)/2 bases in such a way that there is a single Clifford unitary which cycles through each group separately.