FINITE PROJECTIVE SPACES, GEOMETRIC SPREADS OF LINES AND MULTI-QUBITS
Given a (2N-1)-dimensional projective space over GF(2), PG (2N-1, 2), and its geometric spread of lines, there exists a remarkable mapping of this space onto PG (N-1, 4) where the lines of the spread correspond to the points and subspaces spanned by pairs of lines to the lines of PG (N-1, 4). Under such mapping, a nondegenerate quadric surface of the former space has for its image a nonsingular Hermitian variety in the latter space, this quadric being hyperbolic or elliptic in dependence on N being even or odd, respectively. We employ this property to show that generalized Pauli groups of N-qubits also form two distinct families according to the parity of N and to put the role of symmetric Pauli operators into a new perspective. The N = 4 case is taken to illustrate the issue, due to its link with the so-called black-hole/qubit correspondence.