Misplaced Pages

Purification of quantum state: Difference between revisions

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Browse history interactively← Previous editContent deleted Content addedVisualWikitext
Revision as of 19:54, 14 April 2007 editMct mht (talk | contribs)4,336 edits complete positivity, which is true for the partial trace, is not needed here (although i would agree that the redirect probably doesn't make this very clear).← Previous edit Latest revision as of 09:41, 28 February 2022 edit undoChristian75 (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, New page reviewers, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers114,675 edits {{R with history}} 
(24 intermediate revisions by 18 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
#REDIRECT ]
In ], especially ], '''purification''' refers to the fact that every ] acting on finite dimensional Hilbert spaces can be viewed as the ] of some pure state.


{{R with history}}
In purely linear algebraic terms, it can be viewed as a statement about ].

== Statement ==

Let ρ be a density matrix acting on a Hilbert space <math>H_A</math> of finite dimension ''n'', then there exist a Hilbert space <math>H_B</math> and a pure state <math>| \psi \rangle \in H_A \otimes H_B</math> such that the partial trace of <math>| \psi \rangle \langle \psi |</math> with respect to <math>H_B</math>

:<math>\operatorname{Tr}_B | \psi \rangle \langle \psi | = \rho.</math>

=== Proof ===

A density matrix is by definition positive semidefinite. So ρ has square root factorization <math>\rho = A A^* = \sum_{i =1} ^n | i \rangle \langle i |</math>. Let <math>H_B</math> be another copy of the ''n''-dimensional Hilbert space with any orthonormal basis <math>\{ | i' \rangle \}</math>. Define <math>| \psi \rangle \in H_A \otimes H_B</math> by

:<math>| \psi \rangle = \sum_{i} |i \rangle \otimes | i' \rangle.</math>

Direct calculation gives

:<math>
\operatorname{Tr}_B | \psi \rangle \langle \psi | =
\operatorname{Tr}_B \sum_{i, j} |i \rangle \langle j | \otimes | i' \rangle \langle j'| = \rho.
</math>

This proves the claim.

==== Note ====

* The vectorial pure state <math>| \psi \rangle</math> is in the form specified by the ].

* Since square root decompositions of a positive semidefinite matrix are not unique, neither are purifications.

* In linear algebraic terms, a square matrix is positive semidefinite if and only if it can be purified in the above sense. The ''if'' part of the implication follows immediately from the fact that the ] is a ].

== An application: Stinespring's theorem ==
{{sect-stub}}
By combining ] and purification of a mixed state, we can recover the ] for the finite dimensional case.

]

]

Latest revision as of 09:41, 28 February 2022

Redirect to:

  • With history: This is a redirect from a page containing substantive page history. This page is kept as a redirect to preserve its former content and attributions. Please do not remove the tag that generates this text (unless the need to recreate content on this page has been demonstrated), nor delete this page.
    • This template should not be used for redirects having some edit history but no meaningful content in their previous versions, nor for redirects created as a result of a page merge (use {{R from merge}} instead), nor for redirects from a title that forms a historic part of Misplaced Pages (use {{R with old history}} instead).