Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2007/iii/paper-34/1/a/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 34 1 a Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use base-two logarithms, so Von Neumann entropy is measured in bits, and set . Write for the quantum relative entropy, the quantity denoted in the paper. It is unless the support of a positive operator lies within that of .
We first establish nonnegativity of quantum relative entropy, including its equality condition. Let and , and suppose the support condition holds. Put . Concavity of the scalar logarithm givesTerms with have zero weight here. Working first with natural logarithms, the inequality yieldssince the sum to at most . Equality forces for every positive-weight eigenvector, no remaining weight of outside their span, and equality in the logarithm's strict concavity. The latter makes each an eigenvector of with eigenvalue . Thus exactly when .
For the bipartite density operator,Indeed, a projector onto the kernel of , tensored with , has zero expectation in . Positivity implies that annihilates its range: . The same argument applies to . Hence the quantum relative entropy below is finite. On this support,Using the partial trace to evaluate the two local terms givesThis proves Subadditivity of Von Neumann entropy:The proof also identifies equality exactly with the product state .
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