English

SIC-POVMs and the Knaster's Conjecture

Quantum Physics 2024-05-28 v1

Abstract

Symmetric Informationally Complete Positive Operator-Valued Measures (SIC-POVMs) have been constructed in many dimensions using the Weyl-Heisenberg group. In the quantum information community, it is commonly believed that SCI-POVMs exist in all dimensions; however, the general proof of their existence is still an open problem. The Bloch sphere representation of SIC-POVMs allows for a general geometric description of the set of operators, where they form the vertices of a regular simplex oriented based on a continuous function. We use this perspective of the SIC-POVMs to prove the Knaster's conjecture for the geometry of SIC-POVMs and prove the existence of a continuous family of generalized SIC-POVMs where (n21)(n^2-1) of the matrices have the same value of Tr(ρk)Tr(\rho^k). Furthermore, by using numerical methods, we show that a regular simplex can be constructed such that all its vertices map to the same value of Tr(ρ3)Tr(\rho^3) on the Bloch sphere of 33 and 44 dimensional Hilbert spaces. In the 33-dimensional Hilbert space, we generate 10410^4 generalized SIC-POVMs for randomly chosen Tr(ρ3)Tr(\rho^3) values such that all the elements are equivalent up to unitary transformations.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2405.16733,
  title  = {SIC-POVMs and the Knaster's Conjecture},
  author = {S. B. Samuel and Z. Gedik},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.16733},
  year   = {2024}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T16:41:08.385Z