Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2008/iii/paper-61/3/a/ii/solution

For target unitary operator and actual propagator on an -dimensional space, minimize the phase-insensitive unitary gate error
The Cauchy-Schwarz inequality for the Hilbert-Schmidt inner product gives a value in , because both unitary matrices have squared norm . The error is zero exactly when the matrices are proportional, namely . It therefore tests the full process, not just its action on one state, and ignores a physically irrelevant common phase. If the gate phase itself must be fixed, instead minimize , which vanishes only at exact equality.

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