Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2016 / iii / Paper 323 / 4 / i

For any normalized pure state on finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces ${\mathcal{H}}_A\otimes {\mathcal{H}}_B$, the Schmidt decomposition givesThe $u_j$ and $v_j$ form orthonormal sets in their respective spaces. The positive numbers $\sqrt{p_j}$ are the Schmidt coefficients, and $r$ is the Schmidt rank. Taking a partial trace gives the reduced density matricesThus the nonzero eigenvalues of the two reduced density matrices agree.

One construction is a singular value decomposition of the coefficient matrix $M$ in $|\psi ⟩={\sum }_{a,b}{M}_{ab}|a⟩|b⟩$. If $M=U\Sigma V^{†}$, the columns of $U$ give $u_j$, the complex conjugates of the columns of $V$ give $v_j$, and the singular values give $\sqrt{p_j}$. This also explains why the Schmidt coefficients are real and nonnegative.