Mutually orthogonal Latin squares and mutually unbiased bases in dimensions of odd prime power: MOLS and MUBs in odd prime power dimensions

There has been much interest in mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) and their connections with various other discrete structures, such as projective planes, mutually orthogonal Latin squares (MOLS) etc. It has been conjectured by Saniga et al. (J Opt B Quantum Semiclass Opt 6:L19-L20, 2004) that the existence of a complete set of MUBs in ℂ is linked to the existence of a complete set of MOLS of side length d. Since more is known about MOLS than about MUBs, most research has concentrated on constructing MUBs from MOLS (Roy and Scott, J Math Phys 48:072110, 2007; Paterek et al., Phys Rev A 70:012109, 2009). This paper gives a simple algebraic construction of MOLS from two known constructions of MUBs in the odd prime power case