Paper 1, Section I,
Alice wishes to communicate to Bob a 1-bit message or chosen by her with equal prior probabilities . For (respectively ) she sends Bob the quantum state (respectively ). On receiving the state, Bob applies quantum operations to it, to try to determine Alice's message. The Helstrom-Holevo theorem asserts that the probability for Bob to correctly determine Alice's message is bounded by , where , and that this bound is achievable.
(a) Suppose that and , and that Bob measures the received state in the basis , where and , to produce his output 0 or 1 , respectively. Calculate the probability that Bob correctly determines Alice's message, and show that the maximum value of over choices of achieves the Helstrom-Holevo bound.
(b) State the no-cloning theorem as it applies to unitary processes and a set of two non-orthogonal states . Show that the Helstrom-Holevo theorem implies the validity of the no-cloning theorem in this situation.