Measuring the coset state in the group shift operator eigenbasis samples uniformly from the annihilator of a subgroup of a finite abelian group . Indeed,
so the character-sum cancellation lemma gives probability on and zero elsewhere. The modulus of is one, so the offset has no effect on the distribution.
Measure the coset state in the common eigenbasis of the group shift operators. Its overlap is
The character-sum cancellation lemma makes this sum when is trivial on , and zero otherwise. Hence, with the annihilator of a subgroup of a finite abelian group,
Since , this is the uniform distribution on a finite set . The factor has modulus one, so the distribution is independent of . This is abelian hidden-subgroup Fourier sampling.
Write the finite abelian group additively. Its group shift operator is
These unitary operators form the regular representation and commute. The representation-theoretic facts we use are that every irreducible representation of a finite abelian group is one-dimensional, there are such characters of a representation, and their character orthogonality gives an orthonormal basis of functions on . Each linear character here is a group homomorphism , with .
For , the character group of a finite abelian group, put
Changing variables to gives
The vectors are therefore a common eigenbasis. Using instead of its complex conjugate in their definition reverses every eigenphase; this is merely the quantum Fourier transform sign convention.