Surveying points in the complex projective plane

TL;DR

This paper classifies symmetric informationally complete positive operator-valued measures (SIC-POVMs) of rank one in the complex projective plane, proving all known solutions are essentially unique and identifying new point configurations with specific spacing properties.

Contribution

It provides a complete classification of SIC-POVMs in CP^2 without group covariance assumptions and introduces a novel algebraic approach to exclude unknown solutions.

Findings

All SIC sets in CP^2 are isometric to known solutions.

No new SIC sets exist beyond the known configurations.

New point arrangements with specific pairwise spacing are identified.

Abstract

We classify SIC-POVMs of rank one in CP^2, or equivalently sets of nine equally-spaced points in CP^2, without the assumption of group covariance. If two points are fixed, the remaining seven must lie on a pinched torus that a standard moment mapping projects to a circle in R^3. We use this approach to prove that any SIC set in CP^2 is isometric to a known solution, given by nine points lying in triples on the equators of the three 2-spheres each defined by the vanishing of one homogeneous coordinate. We set up a system of equations to describe hexagons in CP^2 with the property that any two vertices are related by a cross ratio (transition probability) of 1/4. We then symmetrize the equations, factor out by the known solutions, and compute a Groebner basis to show that no SIC sets remain. We do find new configurations of nine points in which 27 of the 36 pairs of vertices of the configuration are equally spaced.