Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 35 4 i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The concavity inequality is true, but its printed equality condition is false. At equality always holds, even for distinct states; for example take and . The correct statement on isFor , entropy is therefore strictly concave.
We give the matrix inequality needed for the proof. Define the quantum relative entropy if the support of is contained in that of , and otherwise. Diagonalize the two states with eigenvalues , and put . Each row and column of sums to one. The elementary scalar inequalityfollows from , with equality exactly at ; use limits at zero. ConsequentlyEquality forces whenever . Hence every eigenvector of is also a -eigenvector with eigenvalue , so . Conversely identical states give zero relative entropy. This proves nonnegativity of quantum relative entropy and its equality condition, including states with zero eigenvalues under the support convention.
Now set . For its support contains both component supports. Direct expansion givesSince both coefficients are positive, equality holds exactly when both component states equal , equivalently . At either endpoint the mixture has only one component and equality is automatic. This proves the corrected strict concavity of Von Neumann entropy.