Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2025 iii Paper 323 1 iii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
For , the weighted difference of the two Werner–Holevo channels isThus the map is the transposition map divided by . The diamond norm of the transposition map and invariance of the trace norm under matrix transpose giveSubstitution into the optimal-error formulas shows that an entangled quantum ancilla permits perfect discrimination, whereas every ancilla-free strategy has
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2026 iii Paper 323 1 c iii Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
The normalized Choi matrix of the trace-to-identity map is , while that of transposition is the flip operator . Hence the Werner–Holevo channel hasthe normalized projector onto the antisymmetric subspace.
If the channel were random unitary, part (i) would express as a mixture of maximally entangled vectors. Every vector in such a mixture must lie in the support of , hence in the antisymmetric subspace. Under vectorization, an antisymmetric vector corresponds to a skew-symmetric matrix , while maximal entanglement requires to be proportional to . In odd dimension, , so ; such an cannot be proportional to a unitary. Thus for odd , and in particular , this unital channel is not random unitary, disproving the converse. The odd-dimensional qualification matters because antisymmetric maximally entangled vectors can exist in even dimension.