Past exam of the computer science course of the University of Oxford / 2019 / Quantum information / 3 / c / Solution

By the spectral theorem, the nonscalar unitary V has orthonormal eigenvectors $|v_0⟩,|v_1⟩$ with distinct eigenvalues ${\lambda }_0\ne {\lambda }_1$. Choose $|b⟩=(|v_0⟩+|v_1⟩)/\sqrt{2}$. Then $V|b⟩=({\lambda }_0|v_0⟩+{\lambda }_1|v_1⟩)/\sqrt{2}$ is not proportional to $|b⟩$.

On the product input $|+⟩\otimes |b⟩$, the controlled unitary gate producesIts two conditional target vectors are linearly independent, so the conditional-vector product-state criterion proves that the output is entangled. Equivalently, in the control computational basis and target eigenbasis its coefficient matrix is $\frac{1}{2}\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 1\\ {\lambda }_0& {\lambda }_1\end{array}\right)$, whose determinant is $({\lambda }_1-{\lambda }_0)/4\ne 0$. Thus U is an entangling gate. The excluded scalar case would only apply a phase gate to the control and could not entangle the factors; this is the controlled-unitary entangling criterion.