Three ways to look at mutually unbiased bases

This is a review of the problem of Mutually Unbiased Bases in finite dimensional Hilbert spaces, real and complex. Also a geometric measure of "mubness" is introduced, and applied to some recent calculations in six dimensions (partly done by Bjorck and by Grassl). Although this does not yet solve any problem, some appealing structures emerge.Comment: 18 pages. Talk at the Vaxjo Conference on Foundations of Probability and Physics, June 200

Complex Hadamard matrices and Equiangular Tight Frames

In this paper we give a new construction of parametric families of complex Hadamard matrices of square orders, and connect them to equiangular tight frames. The results presented here generalize some of the recent ideas of Bodmann et al. and extend the list of known equiangular tight frames. In particular, a (36,21) frame coming from a nontrivial cube root signature matrix is obtained for the first time.Comment: 6 pages, contribution to the 16th ILAS conference, Pisa, 201

On quaternary complex Hadamard matrices of small orders

One of the main goals of design theory is to classify, characterize and count various combinatorial objects with some prescribed properties. In most cases, however, one quickly encounters a combinatorial explosion and even if the complete enumeration of the objects is possible, there is no apparent way how to study them in details, store them efficiently, or generate a particular one rapidly. In this paper we propose a novel method to deal with these difficulties, and illustrate it by presenting the classification of quaternary complex Hadamard matrices up to order 8. The obtained matrices are members of only a handful of parametric families, and each inequivalent matrix, up to transposition, can be identified through its fingerprint.Comment: 7 page

Trades in complex Hadamard matrices

A trade in a complex Hadamard matrix is a set of entries which can be changed to obtain a different complex Hadamard matrix. We show that in a real Hadamard matrix of order $n$ all trades contain at least $n$ entries. We call a trade rectangular if it consists of a submatrix that can be multiplied by some scalar $c \neq 1$ to obtain another complex Hadamard matrix. We give a characterisation of rectangular trades in complex Hadamard matrices of order $n$ and show that they all contain at least $n$ entries. We conjecture that all trades in complex Hadamard matrices contain at least $n$ entries.Comment: 9 pages, no figure

On properties of Karlsson Hadamards and sets of Mutually Unbiased Bases in dimension six

The complete classification of all 6x6 complex Hadamard matrices is an open problem. The 3-parameter Karlsson family encapsulates all Hadamards that have been parametrised explicitly. We prove that such matrices satisfy a non-trivial constraint conjectured to hold for (almost) all 6x6 Hadamard matrices. Our result imposes additional conditions in the linear programming approach to the mutually unbiased bases problem recently proposed by Matolcsi et al. Unfortunately running the linear programs we were unable to conclude that a complete set of mutually unbiased bases cannot be constructed from Karlsson Hadamards alone.Comment: As published versio

Temperley-Lieb R-matrices from generalized Hadamard matrices

New sets of rank n-representations of Temperley-Lieb algebra TL_N(q) are constructed. They are characterized by two matrices obeying a generalization of the complex Hadamard property. Partial classifications for the two matrices are given, in particular when they reduce to Fourier or Butson matrices.Comment: 17 page