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slug: mub-six-fourth-basis bibkey: mcnultyweigert2024mutually doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2410.23997 triage: wall motivation_gids:

  • D5/S3/Quantum/Tomography/RankOneContextCommutator
  • D5/S3/Quantum/Tomography/CompleteContextTomography
  • D5/S3/Quantum/Tomography/ComplementaryContextProbabilityPythagoras
  • D5/S3/QuantumBounds/Designs/CollisionConservation

A fourth mutually unbiased basis in dimension six

Problem

Does there exist a family indexed by Fin 4 of orthonormal bases of six-dimensional complex space such that vectors from distinct bases have squared inner-product magnitude exactly 1 / 6? Dimension six is known to admit three mutually unbiased bases, while a complete family would contain seven. The MUB form of Zauner’s conjecture asserts that at most three exist.

This dossier deliberately anchors Problem 10.2 of arXiv:2410.23997v2: “Show that no set of four MU bases exists when d = 6.” It retains Conjecture 2.1 as Zauner’s original formulation, whose affine quantum-design parameters have b = g = 6, r = 1, lambda = 1 / 6, and k = 4. Problem 10.1 is the comparison statement for Fin 7: “Show that no complete set of seven MU bases exists when d = 6.” Conjecture 1.1 likewise concerns complete MUB families in composite dimensions that are not prime powers. Nonexistence at Fin 4 implies nonexistence at Fin 7, while nonexistence at Fin 7 does not by itself exclude Fin 4; the former is therefore the stronger nonexistence statement.

Here “Zauner’s conjecture” means this MUB upper-bound conjecture. It is not the same conjecture as the identically named SIC-POVM existence conjecture in all dimensions.

The review also reports fourteen mathematically equivalent formulations of the complete-set existence problem. In dimension six they concern Fin 7, not the Fin 4 fourth-basis problem. They are source-side routes, not fourteen repository theorems.

Motivation

  • D5/S3/Quantum/Tomography/RankOneContextCommutator.lean supplies RankOneContext, overlap, incompatibility, and aggregated_rank_one_context_commutator. These declarations already express the rank-one projector geometry needed for a conditional MUB consequence.
  • D5/S3/Quantum/Tomography/CompleteContextTomography.lean supplies complete_context_tomography. It accepts a family Fin (n + 2) -> RankOneContext (n + 1), assumes the required overlap identities, and proves consequences of that family. It is not evidence that such a family exists.
  • D5/S3/Quantum/Tomography/ComplementaryContextProbabilityPythagoras.lean separates visible centered-probability mass from an orthogonal residual.
  • D5/S3/QuantumBounds/Designs/CollisionConservation.lean supplies collision_sum_eq_one_add_purity, deriving sum = 1 + trace (rho * rho) only under its finite projective two-design hypothesis hdesign. A union of MUBs supplies that design structure only at mu >= d + 1, which is at least seven bases for d = 6. This dossier has no bridge from a Fin 4 family to hdesign, so the theorem is complete-set (Fin 7) background or a candidate requiring a new bridge, not a necessary constraint on the Fin 4 feasible set.

These are nearby exact identities. None decides whether four MUBs exist in dimension six.

Gap

The orchestrator’s full-tree fixed-string search measured zero D5 hits for MutuallyUnbiased, mutually_unbiased, MutuallyUnbiasedBases, ComplexHadamard, complexHadamard, and HadamardMatrix, with RankOneContext as a positive control. The term unbias occurs only in two existing modules’ library-search comments. Case-insensitive hadamard occurs in three modules, all concerning Hadamard gates or coordinate transforms rather than complex Hadamard matrices.

Consequently the repository has no MUB-family definition, no equivalence between orthonormal bases and rank-one contexts, and no internal formalization of order-six complex Hadamard matrices. The external classification landscape has changed: arXiv:2608.18053, published 2026-08-18, claims a complete and exact finite-incidence classification of order-six complex Hadamard matrices. That preprint was submitted to arXiv on 2026-08-18 at 17:46:58 UTC and was not independently verified here; its peer-review status was not measured for this dossier. Its classification is evidence, not a theorem used by this dossier. The remaining gap is a joint compatibility or exclusion argument over the claimed classified atlas, together with the basis-context bridge, that rules out a Fin 4 family. The existing tomography theorems assume complementary families and derive consequences; they do not construct or exclude that family.

Route

The first reachable statement uses only existing declarations and has this shape:

(context : Fin 4 → RankOneContext 6)
(h : ∀ l k, l ≠ k → ∀ j r,
  overlap (context l) (context k) j r = 1/6)
⊢ ∀ l k, l ≠ k →
  incompatibility (context l) (context k) = 1

This is a conditional bridge: it assumes that the four contexts exist and derives their maximal pairwise incompatibility. It proves neither existence nor nonexistence. No Lean file is added in this round.

Subsequent work would have to proceed in separate, measured steps:

  1. Promote the compiled conditional-bridge probe into a committed Lean declaration and connect its conclusion to the aggregated rank-one commutator identity.
  2. Establish an exact basis-to-RankOneContext equivalence before translating the source’s MUB or complex-Hadamard formulations.
  3. For complete-set (Fin 7) background only, formalize selected members of the review’s fourteen equivalent formulations. Use collision conservation only under its hdesign hypothesis unless a new theorem bridges Fin 4 to that hypothesis; no such bridge is supplied here.
  4. Independently verify and, where needed, formalize the exact finite-incidence atlas claimed by arXiv:2608.18053, then establish a joint compatibility, inequality, or certificate over that atlas strong enough to exclude Fin 4. The classification claim or finite optimization output alone cannot close this step.

Falsifier

A concrete exact family of four pairwise mutually unbiased bases in dimension six would refute the nonexistence conjecture. Conversely, failure to find such a family in a finite search is not a finite certificate of nonexistence; this dossier supplies no finite certificate that rules out every family.

The conditional bridge is finitely falsifiable and must be kept separate from the conjecture. Four explicit RankOneContext 6 values satisfying the stated overlap hypotheses but with a distinct pair whose incompatibility is not one would refute that bridge.

Evidence

arXiv:2203.09429, Three numerical approaches to find mutually unbiased bases using Bell inequalities, by Prat Colomer, Mortimer, Frérot, Farkas, and Acín, reports three numerical methods. Its abstract states:

“In the smallest composite dimension, six, it is known that between three and seven mutually unbiased bases exist, with a decades-old conjecture, known as Zauner’s conjecture, stating that there exist at most three.”

“All three methods correctly identify the known cases in low dimensions and all suggest that there do not exist four mutually unbiased bases in dimension six.”

The authors explicitly decline to treat the heuristic optimum values as a rigorous proof. These computations are evidence against existence, not a nonexistence theorem.

arXiv:2606.13903, Degree-Four Vector-Coordinate SoS Cannot Detect the MUB Upper Bound, excludes one route: degree-four vector-coordinate sum-of-squares cannot detect the MUB upper bound. This negative result is recorded so that the same relaxation is not presented again as a path to the dimension-six proof. It does not exclude higher-degree or differently encoded methods.

ASSUMED-UNVERIFIED: arXiv:2608.18053, A Complete Classification of Complex Hadamard Matrices of Order Six, by Mateo Cárdenes Wuttig and Joseph Tindall, was published 2026-08-18. Its abstract says that the order-six classification had remained open for decades, claims a complete and exact finite-incidence classification up to standard equivalence, reports a proof of Szöllősi’s conjecture, and names applications to balanced six-mode interferometers and mutually unbiased bases. Its mathematical claims were not independently checked for this dossier and are not used as established theorems; its peer-review status was not measured.

Triage

wall. The repository has exact consequences of complementary rank-one contexts but lacks the MUB carrier, the basis-context bridge, and the classification needed to decide Fin 4 in dimension six.

The nearby Zauner-named formal material does not change that boundary. D5/S3/QuantumContext/ZaunerSymplecticMatrix.lean is a certificate for the explicit matrix !![6,23;19,17] over ZMod 24 and its fixed vector; D5/S3/QuantumContext/CliffordPhaseKernel.lean is 38 lines. Neither supplies a dimension-six MUB classification.

The current consumption boundary has no live repository entry point. Problems/ is not part of a machine-selected repository candidate set. There is no periodic scan, automatic ingestion, or machine-derived consumed/discarded lifecycle. This dossier therefore records an external open problem; it does not claim sustained automated consumption or that the repository can solve or advance the conjecture.

ASSUMED-UNVERIFIED

  • Openness records the statement in version 2 of the review, not an exhaustive search of all literature published after that version.
  • No Lean declaration is added in this round. During the original implementation, find .lake/build -name '*.olean' printed zero paths in both the primary checkout and the worktree (both commands exited 0), so the orchestrator did not rerun the probe then. During review, find .lake/build -name '*.olean' | wc -l returned 1412 (exit 0), including .lake/build/lib/lean/D5/S3/Quantum/Tomography/RankOneContextCommutator.olean. The orchestrator then ran lake env lean <probe.lean> on the Route’s exact statement: PROBE_EXIT=0, wall time 20.997 seconds (2.30 seconds user and 4.33 seconds system), with no output or warnings. Replacing 1 / 6 by 1 / 5 was confirmed by grep -c '1 / 5' returning 1; the mutated probe reduced to False and returned MUT_EXIT=1. This checks the scratch proof’s compilability and a negative control, but the statement remains uncommitted probe text rather than a repository Lean declaration or a registered frontier result.
  • The claims of arXiv:2608.18053 are unreviewed and have not been independently verified for this dossier.
  • The review’s fourteen equivalent formulations have not been checked one by one.