Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2025 / ii / Paper 2 / 10C / b / Solution

In the $A$ basis, the transformations whose columns are the new basis vectors areThus $U_C$ is a rotation through $-\pi /3$, while $U_B$ is a real orthogonal reflection, equivalently a rotation with one basis-vector phase reversed.

For any real orthogonal matrix $U$ with columns $|u_j⟩$,Applying this to $U_B$ and $U_C$ and normalizing proves