Eigenvalues and eigenvectors of complex Hadamard matrices

Abstract

Characterizing the $6\times 6$ complex Hadamard matrices (CHMs) is an open problem in linear algebra and quantum information. In this paper, we investigate the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of CHMs. We show that any $n\times n$ CHM with dephased form has two constant eigenvalues $\pm\sqrt{n}$ and has two constant eigenvectors. We obtain the maximum numbers of identical eigenvalues of $6\times 6$ CHMs with dephased form and we extend this result to arbitrary dimension. We also show that there is no $6\times 6$ CHM with four identical eigenvalues. We conjecture that the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of $6\times 6$ CHMs will lead to the complete classification of $6\times 6$ CHMs.