Quantum mechanics can force us to be completely honest and unbiased

Arindam Mitra

Getting an unbiased result is a remarkably long standing problem of collective observation/measurement. It is pointed out that quantum coin tossing can generate unbiased result defeating dishonesty.

Marcin Wieśniak, Tomasz Paterek, Anton Zeilinger

One of the essential features of quantum mechanics is that most pairs of observables cannot be measured simultaneously. This phenomenon manifests itself most strongly when observables are related to mutually unbiased bases. In this paper, we shed some light on the connection between mutually unbiased bases and another essential feature of quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement. It is shown that a complete set of mutually unbiased bases of a bipartite system contains a fixed amount of entanglement, independent of the choice of the set. This has implications for entanglement distribution among the states of a complete set. In prime-squared dimensions we present an explicit experiment-friendly construction of a complete set with a particularly simple entanglement distribution. Finally, we describe the basic properties of mutually unbiased bases composed of product states only. The constructions are illustrated with explicit examples in low dimensions. We believe that the properties of entanglement in mutually unbiased bases may be one of the ingredients to be taken into account to settle the question of the existence of complete sets. We also expect that they will be relevant to applications of bases in the experimental realization of quantum protocols in higher-dimensional Hilbert spaces.

Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

А. В. Никулов

Mohamed Ahmed Shalaby, Yasser Kamal

The application of quantum mechanics contributes to the field of cryptography with very important advantage as it offers a mechanism for detecting the eavesdropper. The pioneering work of quantum key distribution uses mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) to prepare and measure qubits (or qudits). Weak mutually unbiased bases (WMUBs) have weaker properties than MUBs properties, however, unlike MUBs, a complete set of WMUBs can be constructed for systems with composite dimensions. In this paper, we study the use of weak mutually unbiased bases (WMUBs) in quantum key distribution for composite dimensional finite systems. We prove that the security analysis of using a complete set of WMUBs to prepare and measure the quantum states in the generalized BB84 protocol, gives better results than using the maximum number of MUBs that can be constructed, when they are analyzed against the intercept and resend attack.