Sets of Mutually Unbiased Bases as Arcs in Finite Projective Planes?

Metod Saniga, Michel Planat

Published 2004-09-27, updated 2004-11-25Version 2

This note is a short elaboration of the conjecture of Saniga et al (J. Opt. B: Quantum Semiclass. 6 (2004) L19-L20) by regarding a set of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) in a d-dimensional Hilbert space, d being a power of a prime, as an analogue of an arc in a (Desarguesian) projective plane of order d. Complete sets of MUBs thus correspond to (d+1)-arcs, i.e., ovals. The existence of two principally distinct kinds of ovals for d even and greater than four, viz. conics and non-conics, implies the existence of two qualitatively different groups of the complete sets of MUBs for the Hilbert spaces of corresponding dimensions.