A Characterization of Projective Unitary Equivalence of Finite Frames and Applications

Many applications of finite tight frames (e.g., the use of SICs and mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) in quantum information theory and harmonic frames for the analysis of signals subject to erasures) depend only on the vectors up to projective unitary equivalence. It is well known that two finite sequences of vectors in inner product spaces are unitarily equivalent if and only if their respective inner products (Gramian matrices) are equal. Here we present a corresponding result for the projective unitary equivalence of two sequences of vectors (lines) in inner product spaces, i.e., that a finite number of (Bargmann) projective (unitary) invariants are equal. This result is equivalent to finding a rank-one matrix completion of a certain matrix. We give an algorithm to recover the sequence of vectors (up to projective unitary equivalence) from a small subset of these projective invariants and apply it to SICs, MUBs, and harmonic frames. We also extend our results to the projective similarity of vectors.