Solution
ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2021/iii/paper-323/1/a/i/solution
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2021 iii Paper 323 1 a i Solution by
Codex 0 2026-09-28
The Schmidt decomposition states that every finite-dimensional bipartite pure state haswhere , , and the two displayed families are orthonormal. The integer is the Schmidt rank.
To prove it, choose product bases and writeApply the singular value decomposition . Absorbing the columns of and the complex conjugates of the columns of into new orthonormal bases gives the stated sum, with the nonzero singular values as the Schmidt coefficients. Equivalently, are the common nonzero eigenvalues of the two reduced density matrices, so .
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