Markus Frembs
We study incomplete sets of orthogonal stabiliser states that cannot be extended by a further stabiliser state orthogonal to all of its members. Such sets are the stabiliser analogue of unextendible product bases (UPBs), and we thus call them unextendible stabiliser bases (USBs). Leveraging the symplectic geometry underlying the $n$-qudit Pauli group in prime local dimension, we explicitly construct USBs for systems of four qubits and three qudits of odd prime local dimension. Moreover, we show that these are the respective minimal qubit, respectively qudit numbers for which such bases exist, and that USBs exist for all $n\geq4$ qubit and for all $n\geq3$ odd-prime-dimensional qudit systems. Finally, we compare the resource-theoretic aspects of USBs with those of UPBs. We establish that, analogous to the case of UPBs, the orthogonal complement of every unextendible stabiliser set is a stabiliser-free subspace, and its normalised projector is necessarily magic; moreover, it is bound magic in odd prime dimension, yet need not be for qubits. We also show that USB unextendibility alone imposes no uniform quantitative obstruction to discrimination by stabiliser operations.