Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 324 4 a ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Label the measured vertex of the four-cycle by , its two neighbours by , and the opposite vertex by . The edges are . By the definition of a graph state,All Controlled-Z gates commute. Conditioning on the computational basis value of vertex , the factors on edges and act on their other endpoints as and , since . The remaining edges form the three-vertex path :The Born rule gives probability one half for either result. Normalizing provesThis is computational-basis measurement of a graph-state vertex: remove the measured vertex and apply a known Pauli Z gate byproduct to each neighbour. The chosen labels specify precisely which factors occur; any vertex of the square can serve as vertex by relabelling.