Girvin, Yang Modern Condensed Matter Physics 2019 SSP · Problem F.1

Microscopic Theory of Superconductivity

Physics — Condensed Matter · reduced-density-matrix-entanglement

Problem

(i) Show that MM†MM^\dagger and M†MM^\dagger M are Hermitian matrices. (ii) Show that their eigenvalues are non-negative. Hint: this does not require a complex calculation. Simply show that they satisfy the defining property of positive semi-definite matrices. (iii) Show that both MM†MM^\dagger and M†MM^\dagger M obey the requirement that density matrices have unit trace. Hint: use the fact that the state of the system plus bath is correctly normalized, ⟨Ψ∣Ψ⟩=1\langle\Psi|\Psi\rangle = 1.

Related theory

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