Unistochastic matrix

In mathematics, a unistochastic matrix (also called unitary-stochastic) is a doubly stochastic matrix whose entries are the square of the absolute value of some unitary matrix.

A square matrix B of size n is doubly stochastic (or bistochastic) if all its entries are non-negative real numbers and each of its rows and columns sum to 1. It is unistochastic if there exists a unitary matrix U such that

 B_{ij}=|U_{ij}|^2 \text{ for } i,j=1,\dots,n. \,

All 2-by-2 doubly stochastic matrices are unistochastic and orthostochastic, but for larger n it is not the case. Already for  n=3 there exist a bistochastic matrix B which is not unistochastic:


B= \frac{1}{2} 
\begin{bmatrix}
1  & 1 & 0  \\
0  & 1 & 1  \\
1  & 0 & 1   \end{bmatrix}

since any two vectors with moduli equal to the square root of the entries of two columns (rows) of B cannot be made orthogonal by a suitable choice of phases.

Properties

References