Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2008 iii Paper 60 5 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The printed normalization has its factors reversed. For the displayed map , the condition says , which is unitality. Trace preservation instead requiresThese are distinct trace-preserving and unital Kraus conditions. To disprove the printed equivalence, take andThey obey , butThus their completely positive map is not trace preserving. They are the adjoints of the operators of an amplitude damping channel. That channel is trace preserving but sends to , so it cannot satisfy the printed normalization in any Kraus representation either. The corrected characterization is proved next.
Work in finite-dimensional input and output Hilbert spaces, with a linear map on operators. Suppose first that and . For every auxiliary dimension and every positive operator on the extended space,Each summand is positive because conjugation preserves positivity. This is exactly the definition of a completely positive map. Cyclicity of the trace givesso the map is also trace preserving.
Conversely, suppose is completely positive and trace preserving, and let be an orthonormal input basis. Use the unnormalized entangled vector , with the reference factor first. Complete positivity makes the corresponding unnormalized Choi matrix positive:Its spectral decomposition can be written , absorbing the nonnegative eigenvalues into the vectors. Define linear operators uniquely byExpanding the outer products and comparing their reference blocks yieldsThe matrix units span all operators, so linearity proves the Kraus representation for every . Finally, trace preservation givesfor all . Taking matrix units as test operators shows that the matrix in parentheses is zero. This proves both directions of the corrected CPT characterization, including the normalization rather than assuming it.
For an input quantum state ensemble , write and . Its output Holevo quantity isThe Holevo capacity is the optimized one-use quantitywhere the supremum ranges over finite input ensembles and is the Von Neumann entropy in bits.
For uses of a memoryless quantum channel, the map is . An -use code consists of a finite message set of size , an encoding state on the inputs for each message, and a decoding POVM on the output space, with and . The encoding states may be entangled across uses. The measurement outcome is the receiver's decoded message, with conditional probabilityFor uniformly distributed messages the average error and rate areA rate is achievable if there is a sequence of such codes with and . The unassisted classical capacity of a quantum channel is the supremum of achievable rates; the sender and receiver do not share prior entanglement.
The operational content of the Holevo-Schumacher-Westmoreland theorem is that is the capacity for product-state input encodings with collective output measurements. Allowing arbitrary entangled block inputs gives the regularized formulaThe limit equals the supremum because superadditivity of Holevo capacity follows by taking product ensembles for two blocks and using additivity of the Von Neumann entropy on product states. The coding theorem makes every rate below the one-block Holevo quantity achievable through many independently encoded blocks, with collective decoding.
The converse can be seen explicitly from the Holevo bound and Fano's inequality. For a uniform transmitted message and decoded message ,The first inequality is obtained by subtracting the Fano bound on from . Dividing by and letting the average error vanish bounds every achievable rate by the regularized expression. The block-coding achievability just described supplies the reverse bound.
Under the assumed additivity of Holevo capacity across tensor powers, for every . ThusThe stated conditional assertion is true: under this additivity assumption, entangled input states cannot increase the asymptotic unassisted classical rate beyond the rate already achievable with product inputs. The decoder may still use collective measurements across channel outputs.