Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2014 iii Paper 60 3 iv Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Use Klein's inequality, or equivalently nonnegativity of quantum relative entropy. First check the support needed for the logarithm. If , positivity gives for every ; the corresponding row and column vanish. Thus support inclusion under rank-one dephasing gives , and the logarithms may be evaluated on this support.
Since is diagonal in the dephasing basis,The relative-entropy identity for rank-one dephasing follows:Klein's inequality gives . ThereforeEquality holds precisely when , meaning that the input was already diagonal in the chosen basis. This quantifies why rank-one dephasing removes coherence without reducing the entropy.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 66 5 iii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Choose an orthonormal basis of the joint -dimensional Hilbert space whose first vector is the given purification of a density operator . Apply rank-one dephasing to in this basis, and denote the resulting diagonal probabilities by . Their first entry isThe preceding entropy increase under nonselective projective measurement and entropy bound with one prescribed probability yieldTherefore the quantum Fano inequality isThe quantity is the entanglement fidelity of on ; it is already a squared overlap, so it is , rather than , that enters the binary entropy. The argument is an instance of the entropy bound from overlap with a pure state in dimension . At the output is the original pure state and its Von Neumann entropy is zero. For the system is trivial and the same zero-entropy conclusion holds without evaluating .
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2015 iii Paper 66 5 ii Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-06
Put . The rank-one dephasing is . If , positivity givesso . The kernel of is exactly the span of these zero-probability basis vectors and is therefore contained in the kernel of . Taking orthogonal complements proves support inclusion under rank-one dephasing:Here the support of a positive operator is the orthogonal complement of its kernel.
On that support, is diagonal in the measurement basis, givingConsequently the relative-entropy identity for rank-one dephasing isKlein's inequality gives , since both density operators have trace one. For singular , first restrict to where is positive definite, replace by , and let . The support inclusion ensures that the limit is finite. ThusThis proves entropy increase under nonselective projective measurement using Klein's inequality. Equality holds exactly when , so the original density operator was already diagonal in the chosen basis.
Support inclusion under rank-one dephasing 2026-10-06
If , positivity gives , so the corresponding basis vector is in . Therefore , and . This makes the quantum relative entropy of relative to its rank-one dephasing finite.