Constructions of Mutually Unbiased Bases

Two orthonormal bases B and B' of a d-dimensional complex inner-product space are called mutually unbiased if and only if |<b|b'>|^2=1/d holds for all b in B and b' in B'. The size of any set containing (pairwise) mutually unbiased bases of C^d cannot exceed d+1. If d is a power of a prime, then extremal sets containing d+1 mutually unbiased bases are known to exist. We give a simplified proof of this fact based on the estimation of exponential sums. We discuss conjectures and open problems concerning the maximal number of mutually unbiased bases for arbitrary dimensions.