Orbits of quantum states and geometry of Bloch vectors for N-level systems

Physical constraints such as positivity endow the set of quantum states with a rich geometry if the system dimension is greater than 2. To shed some light on the complicated structure of the set of quantum states, we consider a stratification with strata given by unitary orbit manifolds, which can be identified with flag manifolds. The results are applied to study the geometry of the coherence vector for n-level quantum systems. It is shown that the unitary orbits can be naturally identified with spheres inR 2−1 only for n = 2. In higher dimensions the coherence vector only defines a non-surjective embedding into a closed ball. A detailed analysis of the three-level case is presented. Finally, a refined stratification in terms of symplectic orbits is considered. PACS numbers: 03.65.−w, 03.65.Bz