We clarify the mathematical structure underlying unitary t-designs. These are sets of unitary matrices, evenly distributed in the sense that the average of any tth order polynomial over the design equals the average over the entire unitary group. We present a simple necessary and sufficient criterion for deciding if a set of matrices constitutes a design. Lower bounds for the number of elements of 2-designs are derived. We show how to turn mutually unbiased bases into approximate 2-designs whose cardinality is optimal in leading order. Designs of higher order are discussed and an example of a unitary 5-design is presented. We comment on the relation between unitary and spherical designs and outline methods for finding designs numerically or by searching character tables of finite groups. Further, we sketch connections to problems in linear optics and questions regarding typical entanglement.
We clarify the mathematical structure underlying unitary t-designs. These are sets of unitary matrices, evenly distributed in the sense that the average of any tth order polynomial over the design equals the average over the entire unitary group. We present a simple necessary and sufficient criterion for deciding if a set of matrices constitutes a design. Lower bounds for the number of elements of 2-designs are derived. We show how to turn mutually unbiased bases into approximate 2-designs whose cardinality is optimal in leading order. Designs of higher order are discussed and an example of a unitary 5-design is presented. We comment on the relation between unitary and spherical designs and outline methods for finding designs numerically or by searching character tables of finite groups. Further, we sketch connections to problems in linear optics and questions regarding typical entanglement.
A unitary t-design is a set of unitaries that is "evenly distributed" in the sense that the average of any t-th order polynomial over the design equals the average over the entire unitary group. In various fields -- e.g. quantum information theory -- one frequently encounters constructions that rely on matrices drawn uniformly at random from the unitary group. Often, it suffices to sample these matrices from a unitary t-design, for sufficiently high t. This results in more explicit, derandomized constructions. The most prominent unitary t-design considered in quantum information is the multi-qubit Clifford group. It is known to be a unitary 3-design, but, unfortunately, not a 4-design. Here, we give a simple, explicit characterization of the way in which the Clifford group fails to constitute a 4-design. Our results show that for various applications in quantum information theory and in the theory of convex signal recovery, Clifford orbits perform almost as well as those of true 4-designs. Technically, it turns out that in a precise sense, the 4th tensor power of the Clifford group affords only one more invariant subspace than the 4th tensor power of the unitary group. That additional subspace is a stabilizer code -- a structure extensively studied in the field of quantum error correction codes. The action of the Clifford group on this stabilizer code can be decomposed explicitly into previously known irreps of the discrete symplectic group. We give various constructions of exact complex projective 4-designs or approximate 4-designs of arbitrarily high precision from Clifford orbits. Building on results from coding theory, we give strong evidence suggesting that these orbits actually constitute complex projective 5-designs.
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.
Discrete structures in Hilbert space play a crucial role in finding optimal schemes for quantum measurements. We solve the problem of whether a complete set of five isoentangled mutually unbiased bases exists in dimension four, providing an explicit analytical construction. The reduced density matrices of these 20 pure states forming this generalized quantum measurement form a regular dodecahedron inscribed in a sphere of radius sqrt[3/20] located inside the Bloch ball of radius 1/2. Such a set forms a mixed-state 2-design-a discrete set of quantum states with the property that the mean value of any quadratic function of density matrices is equal to the integral over the entire set of mixed states with respect to the flat Hilbert-Schmidt measure. We establish necessary and sufficient conditions mixed-state designs need to satisfy and present general methods to construct them. Furthermore, it is shown that partial traces of a projective design in a composite Hilbert space form a mixed-state design, while decoherence of elements of a projective design yields a design in the classical probability simplex. We identify a distinguished two-qubit orthogonal basis such that four reduced states are evenly distributed inside the Bloch ball and form a mixed-state 2-design.
We give a strongly explicit construction of ϵ approximate k-designs for the orthogonal group O(N) and the unitary group U(N), for N=2n. Our designs are of cardinality poly(Nk/ϵ) (equivalently, they have seed length O(nk+log(1/ϵ))); up to the polynomial, this matches the number of design elements used by the construction consisting of completely random matrices.
We give a strongly explicit construction of ε-approximate k-designs for the orthogonal group O(N) and the unitary group U(N), for N=2n. Our designs are of cardinality poly(Nk/ε) (equivalently, they have seed length O(nk+log(1/ε))); up to the polynomial, this matches the number of design elements used by the construction consisting of completely random matrices.
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.