Structure of Two-qubit Symmetric Informationally Complete POVMs

Abstract

In the four-dimensional Hilbert space, there exist 16 Heisenberg--Weyl (HW) covariant symmetric informationally complete positive operator valued measures (SIC~POVMs) consisting of 256 fiducial states on a single orbit of the Clifford group. We explore the structure of these SIC~POVMs by studying the symmetry transformations within a given SIC~POVM and among different SIC~POVMs. Furthermore, we find 16 additional SIC~POVMs by a regrouping of the 256 fiducial states, and show that they are unitarily equivalent to the original 16 SIC~POVMs by establishing an explicit unitary transformation. We then reveal the additional structure of these SIC~POVMs when the four-dimensional Hilbert space is taken as the tensor product of two qubit Hilbert spaces. In particular, when either the standard product basis or the Bell basis are chosen as the defining basis of the HW group, in eight of the 16 HW covariant SIC~POVMs, all fiducial states have the same concurrence of $\sqrt{2/5}$. These SIC~POVMs are particularly appealing for an experimental implementation, since all fiducial states can be connected to each other with just local unitary transformations. In addition, we introduce a concise representation of the fiducial states with the aid of a suitable tabular arrangement of their parameters.