Past exam of the quantum information course of the University of Cambridge 2015 Paper 1 1 b Solution 2026-10-20
Put and . The detector rotation is real and orthogonal, so its inverse is the same transformation. Substituting it givesThus the requested orthonormal system states areThe pure density operator has not changed: this is only a different Schmidt decomposition of a maximally entangled state. But choosing a nonselective projective measurement in this new detector basis gives a different operation and generally a different state:For an explicit matrix in the original ordered basis, write and . ThenAt the entries and are , whereas they vanish in . Nevertheless, the system and detector individually each have reduced density matrix for either mixture.
This is the preferred-basis problem: the correlated state alone does not specify which detector observable becomes a stable classical record. Arbitrarily declaring collapse in a Schmidt basis changes the physical prediction. The actual detector interaction and environment must supply the basis selection, rather than a mere choice of notation.