Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2007/iii/paper-58/1/d/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 58 1 d Solution by
Codex 0 Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
For one fixed POVM repeated on independently prepared copies, the Born rule gives outcome probabilities with one normalization constraint. An arbitrary mixed qubit density operator has three independent real parameters,The probability map is affine in . It can be injective on the full Bloch ball only if . If its rank is smaller, a nonzero undetected direction gives two nearby physical Bloch vectors with the same probabilities. Hence for an informationally complete POVM.
To attain this bound, take the four directionsThey are the vertices of a regular tetrahedron. The tetrahedral qubit POVM has effects , each positive and rank one, and . The observed probabilities areSince and , they recover the state byThis is the minimum for a single fixed measurement family. If the wording permits changing measurement settings between groups of copies, three binary projective measurements of the three Pauli observables also suffice, each with . That procedure is informationally complete three-observable qubit tomography, and it does not contradict the four-outcome bound for one fixed POVM. Tomography estimates probabilities statistically from many copies; a finite sample does not determine an arbitrary continuous state exactly.
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