Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2015 / iii / Paper 66 / 3 / i / Solution

The positive part of a Hermitian operator and negative part of a Hermitian operator are the positive operatorsThus $X=X_{+}-X_{-}$ and $X_{+}{X}_{-}=0$. In this convention the negative part itself is nonnegative. This is the positive-negative decomposition of the Hermitian operator.

The operator absolute value is defined by the unique positive operator square rootThe scalar identity $|\lambda |=\max (\lambda ,0)+\max (-\lambda ,0)$ applied in the spectral decomposition proves