Constructing exact symmetric informationally complete measurements from numerical solutions

Source abstract

Abstract Recently, several intriguing conjectures have been proposed connecting symmetric informationally complete quantum measurements (SIC POVMs, or SICs) and algebraic number theory. These conjectures relate the SICs to their minimal defining algebraic number field. Testing or sharpening these conjectures requires that the SICs are expressed exactly, rather than as numerical approximations. While many exact solutions of SICs have been constructed previously using Gröbner bases, this method has probably been taken as far as is possible with current computer technology (except in special cases where there are additional symmetries). Here, we describe a method for converting high-precision numerical solutions into exact ones using an integer relation algorithm in conjunction with the Galois symmetries of an SIC. Using this method, we have calculated 69 new exact solutions, including nine new dimensions, where previously only numerical solutions were known—which more than triples the number of known exact solutions. In some cases, the solutions require number fields with degrees as high as 12 288. We use these solutions to confirm that they obey the number-theoretic conjectures, and address two questions suggested by the previous work.