Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2005 iii Paper 37 1 a Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Use base-two logarithms for Von Neumann entropy, so the units are bits, and adopt . All systems here may be taken finite-dimensional; the entropy arguments also apply when the displayed Von Neumann entropies are finite. The density operator of the joint pure state is . It is a rank-one orthogonal projector, whose only nonzero eigenvalue is one. ConsequentlyThe reduced density matrices are and . The quantum conditional entropy is defined by the entropy differenceFor the pure state under consideration this becomes . To determine when it is negative, write the Schmidt decompositionThe eigenvalues of are the , together with possible zeros. Each contribution is nonnegative, and their sum vanishes exactly when one eigenvalue equals one. Equivalently the Schmidt rank is one and is a product state. If the pure state is entangled, then , every nonzero eigenvalue is strictly below one, and the Von Neumann entropy is strictly positive. Thus the pure-state negative conditional entropy criterion givesThe purity assumption matters: for mixed density operators, negative quantum conditional entropy is not necessary for entanglement.