Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2007 / iii / Paper 59 / 3 / Solution

Take the labels $r,s\in \{0,\dots ,n-1\}$, with basis indices read modulo $n$. There is a missing hypothesis in the printed claim: the root of unity must be primitive. For example, when $n=2$ and $\omega =1$, the two labels $(0,0)$ and $(1,0)$ produce the identical state $(|00⟩+|11⟩)/\sqrt{2}$, so they are not orthogonal. More generally, if the order of $\omega$ is $d<n$, changing $r$ to $r+d$ repeats a state. The orthonormality claim is false for a nonprimitive root.

For the intended result, choose a primitive root of unity, for example $\omega =e^{2\pi i/n}$. Since $|\omega |=1$, expansion in the orthonormal basis givesIf $r=r^{\prime }$, the sum is $n$. If $r\ne r^{\prime }$ modulo $n$, primitiveness gives $q={\omega }^{r^{\prime }-r}\ne 1$ while $q^n=1$, and the finite geometric series is $(1-q^n)/(1-q)=0$. ThusThere are $n^2$ vectors in an $n^2$-dimensional Hilbert space, so they form the generalized Bell basis. Each has equal Schmidt coefficients $1/\sqrt{n}$ and is a maximally entangled state.

For qudit teleportation, let $C$ be Alice's unknown input, write $|\chi {⟩}_C={\sum }_j{\alpha }_j|j{⟩}_C$, and let Alice and Bob share $|\Phi {⟩}_{AB}=n^{-1/2}{\sum }_k|k{⟩}_A|k{⟩}_B$. Alice holds $C,A$ and Bob holds $B$. Define the qudit shift and phase operatorsBoth are unitary. Alice makes a joint projective measurement of $C,A$ in the generalized Bell basis, with projectors $|{\psi }_{rs}⟩⟨{\psi }_{rs}|$. Completeness follows from the orthonormality just proved.

For outcome $(r,s)$, contracting the corresponding bra with the joint input and resource gives Bob's unnormalized state:The Born rule therefore gives $p_{rs}=1/n^2$, since $X^s{Z}^{-r}$ preserves the input norm. Conditional on this outcome, Bob holds $X^s{Z}^{-r}|\chi ⟩$. Alice sends him the classical label $(r,s)$, and he applies its inverse in the displayed order:The corrected receiver state is exactly the unknown input state for every outcome. Alice needs no knowledge of the amplitudes. The label has $n^2$ possibilities and can be encoded in $\lceil {\log }_2(n^2)\rceil$ classical bits; when $n$ is a power of two this is exactly $2{\log }_{2}n$. The protocol consumes the shared maximally entangled state and the original carrier is measured, so it does not retain an additional copy of the unknown state.

Equivalently, the complete joint quantum state has the teleportation expansionIt follows from the contraction calculation and completeness of the generalized Bell basis. After correction the branch operators are all $I/n$, so their sum defines the identity quantum channel: ${\sum }_{r,s}(I/n)\rho (I/n)=\rho$. Acting on the input part of a joint state with a reference gives the same identity, which proves teleportation as an identity channel on a reference and extends the protocol to mixed inputs.

Before receiving the label, Bob instead has the outcome-averaged stateTo check the equality, averaging over $r$ kills the off-diagonal matrix entries by the same root-of-unity sum; averaging the cyclic shifts $s$ makes every diagonal entry the total trace divided by $n$. This is the Heisenberg-Weyl twirling channel. Thus the classical message is necessary to recover the input, consistently with the no-communication theorem derived in Question 1.