Compute the honest one-qubit density operators in the computational basis. Writing and , the two quantum state ensembles give
The equality includes the off-diagonal coherence; comparing only the basis outcome probabilities would not suffice.
The protocol is perfectly hiding against Bob when Alice is honest. Independence of the honest preparations makes his full received density operator . For any POVM , including collective measurements and measurements using ancillas, the Born rule gives the same outcome probabilities . Thus no measurement supplies information about the committed bit.
It is not binding against Alice. Here is an explicit ensemble-steering attack on quantum bit commitment. For each position, Alice prepares the normalized two-qubit pure state
retains and sends . Its partial trace on is the honest common density operator. She sends the halves of independent copies while retaining all the halves, and chooses her bit only at unveiling.
To open one, she makes a projective measurement of each retained qubit in the computational basis. Outcome zero has probability and prepares Bob's state ; outcome one has probability and prepares . She announces that list. It has exactly the honest bit-one distribution, and every declared-state test passes.
To open zero, she instead measures each retained qubit using a three-outcome POVM with effects , where
All effects are positive. Their diagonal sums are and , and the off-diagonal sum is zero, so . This establishes that the proposed POVM is physically valid.
To verify the conditional states directly, the coefficient matrix of , with Bob's index as the row and Alice's as the column, is
A real rank-one effect on Alice's half gives the unnormalized Bob state vector . For the three effects above,
Their squared norms are therefore , exactly the honest bit-zero probabilities, and Bob's conditional pure states are the corresponding declared states. Independent measurements on the retained halves produce the honest distribution of the entire list, so even checks on the declared frequencies do not defeat the attack. Every declared-state projector test again succeeds.
Alice can consequently unveil either bit with acceptance probability one, without having chosen it when sending the qubits. This is the Hughston–Jozsa–Wootters theorem mechanism implemented by an explicit measurement, rather than merely an appeal to the general impossibility of perfectly hiding and binding quantum bit commitment.