Diamond norm of the transposition map Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-11-05
For the transposition map , , the induced trace norm is one, while the diamond norm isThe first equality follows because transposition preserves every singular value and hence the trace norm.
For the lower bound, apply to the normalized maximally entangled state projector . Its partial transpose is , with the swap operator. All singular values of are one, so while .
For the upper bound, partial transpose preserves the Frobenius norm . On matrices of size ,A -dimensional ancilla suffices in the definition of the diamond norm, proving equality. [ref]
The Theory of Quantum Information by John Watrous. Chapter 3, Example 3.42, equations 3.249–3.255, and Definition 3.43
For , transposition is not completely positive: has a negative eigenvalue on the antisymmetric subspace. Thus this is a mathematical example of norm amplification by an entangled ancilla; transposition itself is not a physically implementable quantum channel.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2025 iii Paper 323 1 ii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
For a fixed input, the Holevo–Helstrom theorem gives the optimal error for the two output states. Optimizing the input and quantum ancilla therefore givesThe stabilization in the diamond norm is exactly the optimization over ancillary systems. Without an ancilla the same argument instead giveswhere is the induced trace norm.
Quantum channel discrimination Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-11-05
Quantum channel discrimination feeds a common input into one of several candidate quantum channels and measures the output. An entangled quantum ancilla permits inputs and compares ; optimal binary discrimination is governed by the diamond norm of the weighted channel difference.