English

Graph Quantum Magic Squares and Free Spectrahedra

Mathematical Physics 2026-03-04 v3 math.MP Operator Algebras

Abstract

Recently De les Coves, Drescher and Netzer showed that an analogue of the Birkhoff--von Neumann theorem fails in the quantum setting. Motivated by this and questions arising in the study of quantum automorphisms of graphs, we introduce a graph-based variant of quantum magic squares and show that the analogue already fails for the cycle C4C_4, via an explicit counterexample. We also show that they admit monic linear matrix inequality descriptions, hence form compact free spectrahedra.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.08797,
  title  = {Graph Quantum Magic Squares and Free Spectrahedra},
  author = {Francesca La Piana},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.08797},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

24 pages. Minor corrections, typos, and minor revisions to the exposition

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:17:24.561Z