Complementary Decompositions and Unextendible Mutually Unbiased Bases

Abstract

Unextendible sets of Mutually Unbiased Bases (MUBs) are examined from the point of view of complementary subalgebras. We show, that the linear span of less than $d+1$ factors of $M_d\otimes M_d$ does not contain pure states, and therefore some complementary decompositions give rise to undextendable sets of MUBs. We provide some new complementary decompositions, and thus prove strong unextendibility of some set of MUBs.

16 pages