Mutually unbiased bases, generalized spin matrices and separability

A collection of orthonormal bases for a complex d-dimensional Hilbert space is called mutually unbiased (MUB) if for any two vectors v and to from different bases the square of the inner product equals 1/d : \\(2) = 1/d. The MUB problem is to prove or disprove the existence of a maximal set of d + 1 bases. It has been shown in [Ann. Phys. 191 (1989) 3631 that such a collection exists if d is a power of a prime number p. We revisit this problem and use d x d generalizations of the Pauli spin matrices to give a constructive proof of this result. Specifically we give explicit representations of commuting families of unitary matrices whose eigenvectors solve the MUB problem. Additionally we give formulas from which the orthogonal bases can be readily computed. We show how the techniques developed here provide a natural way to analyze the separability of the bases. The techniques used require properties of algebraic field extensions, and the relevant part of that theory is included in the appendix. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.