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 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.
Rank-one dephasing 2026-10-06
In an orthonormal basis, rank-one dephasing is the quantum channel . It removes off-diagonal entries while preserving the basis probabilities. Its output Von Neumann entropy is their Shannon entropy, and the relative-entropy identity for rank-one dephasing quantifies the entropy increase.