Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2024/iii/paper-225/3/b/solution

For factorizations and , the Procrustes distance between covariance operators is the following infimum over unitary operators :
Unitary invariance of the Hilbert-Schmidt norm gives
The polar decomposition of a bounded operator and trace duality imply
where the last equality expresses the trace norm as the sum of the singular values. Taking the infimum proves

New to topics? Read the docs here!