Mutually unbiased bases and orthogonal decompositions of Lie algebras

We establish a connection between the problem of constructing maximal collections of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) and an open problem in the theory of Lie algebras. More precisely, we show that a collection of $\mu$ MUBs in $\K^n$ gives rise to a collection of $\mu$ Cartan subalgebras of the special linear Lie algebra $sl_n(\K)$ that are pairwise orthogonal with respect to the Killing form, where $\K=\R$ or $\K=\C$. In particular, a complete collection of MUBs in $\C^n$ gives rise to a so-called orthogonal decomposition (OD) of $sl_n(\C)$. The converse holds if the Cartan subalgebras in the OD are also $\dag$-closed, i.e., closed under the adjoint operation. In this case, the Cartan subalgebras have unitary bases, and the above correspondence becomes equivalent to a result of \cite{bbrv02} relating collections of MUBs to collections of maximal commuting classes of unitary error bases, i.e., orthogonal unitary matrices. This connection implies that for $n\le 5$ an essentially unique complete collection of MUBs exists. We define \emph{monomial MUBs}, a class of which all known MUB constructions are members, and use the above connection to show that for $n=6$ there are at most three monomial MUBs.