One of the key concepts in quantum information theory is the difference between separable states and entangled states. A pure quantum state (that is, a unit vector) v ∈ Cⁿ ⊗ Cⁿ is said to be separable if it can be written as v = a ⊗ b for some a,b ∈ Cⁿ; otherwise v is called entangled. In this post we will investigate what operators preserve the set of separable pure states, as well as what operators entangle all separable pure states.

Separable Pure State Preservers and Entangling Gates

In the design of quantum algorithms, entangling gates play a very important role. Entangling gates are unitary operators that are able to generate entanglement. A bit more specifically, a unitary operator U ∈ M_n ⊗ M_n (where M_n is the space of n × n complex matrices) is called an entangling gate if there exists a separable pure state v = a ⊗ b ∈ Cⁿ ⊗ Cⁿ such that Uv is entangled. Conversely, we will say that a unitary operator U preserves separability if Uv is separable whenever v is separable.

In order to answer the question of what unitaries preserve separability, it is instructive to consider some simple examples (this is often a useful way to formulate conjectures regarding preserver problems). For example, it is clear that if U = A ⊗ B for some unitary operators A, B ∈ M_n, then U preserves separability (because U(a ⊗ b) = Aa ⊗ Bb is separable). Another example of a unitary operator that preserves separability is the swap (or flip) operator S defined on separable states by S(a ⊗ b) = b ⊗ a (the action of S on the rest of Cⁿ ⊗ Cⁿ is determined by extending linearly). It turns out that these are essentially the only operators that preserve separability [1,2,3]:

Theorem 1. Let U ∈ M_n ⊗ M_n be a unitary operator. Then U preserves separability (i.e., U is not an entangling gate) if and only if there exist unitary operators A, B ∈ M_n such that either U = A ⊗ B or U = S(A ⊗ B).

As we already saw, the “if” direction of the above result is trivial – the meat and potatoes of the theorem comes from the “only if” direction (as is typically the case with results about linear preservers). Theorem 1 was first proved in [1] essentially by case analysis and checking the action of a separability-preserving unitary on a basis of Cⁿ ⊗ Cⁿ, and was subsequently re-proved using similar techniques (but with different motivations and connections) in [2]. The result was proved in [3] by using the vector-operator isomorphism and the fact that a linear map Φ : M_n → M_n preserves the set of rank-1 operators if and only if there exist A, B ∈ M_n such that either Φ(X) ≡ AXB or Φ(X) ≡ AX^tB [4].

Theorem 1 also follows as a simple corollary of several related results that have recently been proved in [5,6]. A version of Theorem 1 for multipartite systems (i.e., systems that are the tensor product of more than two copies of Cⁿ) can be found in [3] and [7].

Universal Entangling Gates

A universal entangling gate is, as its name suggests, a stronger form of an entangling gate – it is a unitary operator U such that U(a ⊗ b) is entangled for all a, b ∈ Cⁿ (contrast this with entangling gates, which require only that U(a ⊗ b) is entangled for some a, b ∈ Cⁿ). The structure of universal entangling gates is much less well-understood than that of entangling gates, though we can still at least say when they exist.

It is not difficult to convince yourself that universal entangling gates can’t exist in small dimensions. Let’s begin by supposing n = 2. The set of pure states in C² ⊗ C² can be regarded as a 7-dimensional real manifold (7 = 2 × (n × n) – 1, where we subtract one because pure states all have unit length), while the set of separable pure states in C² ⊗ C² can be regarded as a 5-dimensional real manifold (5 = (2 × n – 1) + (2 × n – 1) – 1, where the final one is subtracted because the overall phase of the first system relative to the second system is irrelevant). Thus, if U ∈ M₂ ⊗ M₂ were a universal entangler, it would have to send a 5-dimensional manifold into the 7 – 5 = 2 remaining dimensions of the space, which seems unlikely. Similarly, if n = 3 and U ∈ M₃ ⊗ M₃ were a universal entangler, it would have to send a 9-dimensional manifold into the 17 – 9 = 8 remaining dimensions of the space, which also seems unlikely.

Indeed, this type of argument was made rigorous via methods of algebraic geometry in [8], where the following result was proved:

Theorem 2. There exists a universal entangling gate in M_n ⊗ M_n if and only if n ≥ 4.

Despite knowing when universal entangling gates exist, we still don’t have a characterization of such operators, nor do we even have many explicit examples (does anyone have an explicit example for 3 ⊗ 4 or 4 ⊗ 4 systems?). Similar techniques to those used in the proof of Theorem 2 should also shed light on when universal entangling gates exist in multipartite systems M_n1 ⊗ M_n2 ⊗ … ⊗ M_nk, but to my knowledge this calculation has not been explicitly carried out.

References:

1. M. Marcus and B. N. Moyls, Transformations on tensor product spaces. Pacific Journal of Mathematics 9, 1215–1221 (1959).
2. F. Hulpke, U. V. Poulsen, A. Sanpera, A. Sen De, U. Sen, and M. Lewenstein, Unitarity as preservation of entropy and entanglement in quantum systems. Foundations of Physics 36, 477–499 (2006). E-print: arXiv:quant-ph/0407118
3. N. Johnston, Characterizing Operations Preserving Separability Measures via Linear Preserver Problems. To appear in Linear and Multilinear Algebra (2011). E-print: arXiv:1008.3633 [quant-ph]
4. L. Beasley, Linear operators on matrices: the invariance of rank k matrices. Linear Algebra and its Applications 107, 161–167 (1988).
5. E. Alfsen and F. Shultz, Unique decompositions, faces, and automorphisms of separable states. Journal of Mathematical Physics 51, 052201 (2010). E-print: arXiv:0906.1761 [math.OA]
6. S. Friedland, C.-K. Li, Y.-T. Poon, and N.-S. Sze, The automorphism group of separable states in quantum information theory. Journal of Mathematical Physics 52, 042203 (2011). E-print: arXiv:1012.4221 [quant-ph]
7. R. Westwick, Transformations on tensor spaces. Pacific Journal of Mathematics 23, 613–620 (1967).
8. J. Chen, R. Duan, Z. Ji, M. Ying, J. Yu, Existence of Universal Entangler. Journal of Mathematical Physics 49, 012103 (2008). E-print: arXiv:0704.1473 [quant-ph]

Recall that a unitarily-invariant matrix norm is a norm on matrices X ∈ M_n such that

One nice way to think about unitarily-invariant norms is that they are the matrix norms that depend only on the matrix’s singular values. Some unitarily-invariant norms that are particularly well-known are the operator (spectral) norm, trace norm, Frobenius (Hilbert-Schmidt) norm, Ky Fan norms, and Schatten p-norms (in fact, I would say that the induced p-norms for p ≠ 2 are the only really common matrix norms that aren’t unitarily-invariant – I will consider these norms in the future).

The core question that I am going to consider today is what linear maps preserve singular values and unitarily-invariant matrix norms. Clearly multiplication on the left and right by unitary matrices preserve such norms (by definition). However, the matrix transpose also preserves singular values and all unitarily-invariant norms – are there other linear maps on complex matrices that preserve these norms? For a more thorough treatment of this question, the interested reader is directed to [1,2].

Linear Maps That Preserve Singular Values

We first consider the simplest of the above questions: what linear maps Φ : M_n → M_n are such that the singular values of Φ(X) are the same as the singular values of X for all X ∈ M_n? In order to answer this question, recall Theorem 1 from my previous post, which states [3] that if Φ is an invertible map such that Φ(X) is nonsingular whenever X is nonsingular, then there exist M, N ∈ M_n with det(MN) ≠ 0 such that

In order to make use of this result, we will first have to show that any singular-value-preserving map is invertible and sends nonsingular matrices to nonsingular matrices. To this end, notice (recall?) that the operator norm of a matrix is equal to its largest singular value. Thus, any map that preserves singular values must be an isometry of the operator norm, and thus must be invertible (since all isometries are easily seen to be invertible).

Furthermore,  if we use the singular value decomposition to write X = USV for some unitaries U, V ∈ M_n and a diagonal matrix of singular values S ∈ M_n, then det(X) = det(USV) = det(U)det(S)det(V) = det(UV)det(S). Because UV is unitary, we know that |det(UV)| = 1, so we have |det(X)| = |det(S)| = det(S); that is, the product of the singular values of X equals the absolute value of its determinant. So any map that preserves singular values also preserves the absolute value of the matrix determinant. But any map that preserves the absolute value of determinants must preserve the set of nonsingular matrices because X is nonsingular if and only if det(X) ≠ 0. It follows from the above result about invertibility-preserving maps that if Φ preserves singular values then there exist M, N ∈ M_n with det(MN) ≠ 0 such that either Φ(X) = MXN or Φ(X) = MX^TN.

We will now prove that M and N must each in fact be unitary. To this end, pick any unit vector x ∈ Cⁿ and let c denote the Euclidean length of Mx:

By the fact that Φ must preserve singular values (and hence the operator norm) we have that if y ∈ Cⁿ is any other unit vector, then

Because y was an arbitrary unit vector, we have that N^* = (1/c)U, where U ∈ M_n is some unitary matrix. It can now be similarly argued that M = cV for some unitary matrix V ∈ M_n. By simply adjusting constants, we have proved the following:

Theorem 1. Let Φ : M_n → M_n be a linear map. Then the singular values of Φ(X) equal the singular values of X for all X ∈ M_n if and only if there exist unitary matrices U, V ∈ M_n such that

Isometries of the Frobenius Norm

We now consider the problem of characterizing isometries of the Frobenius norm defined for X ∈ M_n by

That is, we want to describe the maps Φ that preserve the Frobenius norm. It is clear that the Frobenius norm of X is just the Euclidean norm of vec(X), the vectorization of X. Thus we know immediately from the standard isomorphism that sends operators to bipartite vectors and super operators to bipartite operators that Φ preserves the Frobenius norm if and only if there exist families of operators {A_i}, {B_i} such that Σ_i A_i ⊗ B_i is a unitary matrix and

It is clear that any map of the form described by Theorem 1 above can be written in this form, but there are also many other maps of this type that are not of the form described by Theorem 1. In the next section we will see that the Frobenius norm is essentially the only unitarily-invariant complex matrix norm containing isometries that are not of the form described by Theorem 1.

Isometries of Other Unitarily-Invariant Norms

One way of thinking about Theorem 1 is as providing a canonical form for any map Φ that preserves all unitarily-invariant norms. However, in many cases it is enough that Φ preserves a single unitarily-invariant norm for it to be of that form. For example, it was shown by Schur in 1925 [4] that if Φ preserves the operator norm then it must be of the form described by Theorem 1. The same result was proved for the trace norm by Russo in 1969 [5]. Li and Tsing extended the same result to the remaining Schatten p-norms, Ky Fan norms, and (p,k)-norms in 1988 [6].

In fact, the following result, which completely characterizes isometries of all unitarily-invariant complex matrix norms other than the Frobenius norm, was obtained in [7]:

Theorem 2. Let Φ : M_n → M_n be a linear map. Then Φ preserves a given unitarily-invariant norm that is not a multiple of the Frobenius norm if and only if there exist unitary matrices U, V ∈ M_n such that

References:

1. C.-K. Li and S. Pierce, Linear preserver problems. The American Mathematical Monthly 108, 591–605 (2001).
2. C.-K. Li, Some aspects of the theory of norms. Linear Algebra and its Applications 212–213, 71–100 (1994).
3. J. Dieudonne, Sur une generalisation du groupe orthogonal a quatre variables. Arch. Math. 1, 282–287 (1949).
4. I. Schur, Einige bemerkungen zur determinanten theorie. Sitzungsber. Preuss. Akad. Wiss. Berlin 25, 454–463 (1925).
5. B. Russo, Trace preserving mappings of matrix algebra. Duke Math. J. 36, 297–300 (1969).
6. C.-K. Li and N.-K. Tsing, Some isometries of rectangular complex matrices. Linear and Multilinear Algebra 23, 47–53 (1988).
7. C.-K. Li and N.-K. Tsing, Linear operators preserving unitarily invariant norms of matrices. Linear and Multilinear Algebra 26, 119–132 (1990).

The theory of linear preserver problems deals with characterizing linear (complex) matrix-valued maps that preserve certain properties of the matrices they act on. For example, some of the most famous linear preserver problems ask what a map must look like if it preserves invertibility or the determinant of matrices. Today I will focus on introducing some of the basic linear preserver problems that got the field off the ground – in the near future I will explore linear preserver problems dealing with various families of norms and linear preserver problems that are actively used today in quantum information theory. In the meantime, the interested reader can find a more thorough introduction to common linear preserver problems in [1,2].

Suppose Φ : M_n → M_n (where M_n is the set of n×n complex matrices) is a linear map. It is well-known that any such map can be written in the form

where {A_i}, {B_i} ⊂ M_n are families of matrices (sometimes referred to as the left and right generalized Choi-Kraus operators of Φ (phew!)). But what if we make the additional restrictions that Φ is an invertible map and Φ(X) is nonsingular whenever X ∈ M_n is nonsingular? The problem of characterizing maps of this type (which are sometimes called invertibility-preserving maps) is one of the first linear preserver problems that was solved, and it turns out that if Φ is invertibility-preserving then either Φ or T ○ Φ (where T represents the matrix transpose map) can be written with just a single pair of Choi-Kraus operators:

Theorem 1. [3] Let Φ : M_n → M_n be an invertible linear map. Then Φ(X) is nonsingular whenever X ∈ M_n is nonsingular if and only if there exist M, N ∈ M_n with det(MN) ≠ 0 such that

In addition to being interesting in its own right, Theorem 1 serves as a starting point that allows for the simple derivation of several related results.

Determinant-Preserving Maps

For example, suppose Φ is a linear map such that det(Φ(X)) = det(X) for all X ∈ M_n. We will now find the form that maps of this type (called determinant-preserving maps) have using Theorem 1. In order to use Theorem 1 though, we must first show that Φ is invertible.

We prove that Φ is invertible by contradiction. Suppose there exists X ≠ 0 such that Φ(X) = 0. Then because Φ preserves determinants, it must be the case that X is singular. Then there exists a singular Y ∈ M_n such that X + Y is nonsingular. It follows that 0 ≠ det(X + Y) = det(Φ(X + Y)) = det(0 + Φ(Y)) = det(Y) = 0, a contradiction. Thus it must be the case that X = 0 and so Φ is invertible.

Furthermore, any map that preserves determinants must preserve the set of nonsingular matrices because X is nonsingular if and only if det(X) ≠ 0. It follows from Theorem 1 that for any determinant-preserving map Φ there must exist M, N ∈ M_n with det(MN) ≠ 0 such that either Φ(X) = MXN or Φ(X) = MX^TN. However, in this case we have det(X) = det(Φ(X)) = det(MXN) = det(MN)det(X) for all X ∈ M_n, so det(MN) = 1. Conversely, it is not difficult (an exercise left to the interested reader) to show that any map of this form with det(MN) = 1 must be determinant-preserving. What we have proved is the following result, originally due to Frobenius [4]:

Theorem 2. Let Φ : M_n → M_n be a linear map. Then det(Φ(X)) = det(X) for all X ∈ M_n if and only if there exist M, N ∈ M_n with det(MN) = 1 such that

Spectrum-Preserving Maps

The final linear preserver problem that we will consider right now is the problem of characterizing linear maps Φ such that the eigenvalues (counting multiplicities) of Φ(X) are the same as the eigenvalues of X for all X ∈ M_n (such maps are sometimes called spectrum-preserving maps). Certainly any map that is spectrum-preserving must also be determinant-preserving (since the determinant of a matrix is just the product of its eigenvalues), so by Theorem 2 there exist M, N ∈ M_n with det(MN) = 1 such that either Φ(X) = MXN or Φ(X) = MX^TN.

Now note that any map that preserves eigenvalues must also preserve trace (since the trace is just the sum of the matrix’s eigenvalues) and so we have Tr(X) = Tr(Φ(X)) = Tr(MXN) = Tr(NMX) for all X ∈ M_n. This implies that Tr((I – NM)X) = 0 for all X ∈ M_n, so we have NM = I (i.e., M = N^-1). Conversely, it is simple (another exercise left for the interested reader) to show that any map of this form with M = N^-1 must be spectrum-preserving. What we have proved is the following characterization of maps that preserve eigenvalues:

Theorem 3. Let Φ : M_n → M_n be a linear map. Then Φ is spectrum-preserving if and only if det(Φ(X)) = det(X) and Tr(Φ(X)) = Tr(X) for all X ∈ M_n if and only if there exists a nonsingular N ∈ M_n such that

References:

1. C. K. Li, S. Pierce, Linear preserver problems. The American Mathematical Monthly 108, 591–605 (2001).
2. C. K. Li, N. K. Tsing, Linear preserver problems: A brief introduction and some special techniques. Linear Algebra and its Applications 162–164, 217–235 (1992).
3. J. Dieudonne, Sur une generalisation du groupe orthogonal a quatre variables. Arch. Math. 1,
   282–287 (1949).
4. G. Frobenius, Uber die Darstellung der endlichen Gruppen durch Linear Substitutionen. Sitzungsber
   Deutsch. Akad. Wiss. Berlin 994–1015 (1897).

A few months ago, I spent two posts describing the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism between linear operators from M_n to M_m (often referred to as “superoperators“) and linear operators living in the space M_n ⊗ M_m. However, there is another isomorphism between superoperators and regular operators — one that I’m not sure of any name for but which has just as many interesting properties.

Recall from Section 1 of this post that any superoperator Φ can be written as

for some operators {A_i} and {B_i}. The isomorphism that I am going to focus on in this post is the one given by associating Φ with the operator

The main reason that M_Φ can be so useful is that it retains the operator structure of Φ. In particular, if you define vec(X) to be the vectorization of the operator X, then

In other words, if you treat X as a vector, then M_Φ is the operator describing the action of Φ on X. From this it becomes simple to compute some basic quantities describing Φ. For example, the induced Frobenius norm,

is equal to the standard operator norm of M_Φ. If n = m then we can define the eigenvalues {λ} and the eigenmatrices {V} of Φ in the obvious way via

Then the eigenvalues of Φ are exactly the eigenvalues of M_Φ, and the corresponding eigenvectors of M_Φ are the vectorizations of the eigenmatrices of Φ. It is similarly easy to check whether Φ is invertible (by checking whether or not det(M_Φ) = 0), find the inverse if it exists, or find the nullspace (and a pseudoinverse) if it doesn’t.

Finally, here’s a question for the interested reader to think about: why is the transpose required on the B_i operators for this isomorphism to make sense? That is, why can we not define an isomorphism between Φ and the operator

This is a continuation of this post.
Please read that post to learn what the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism is.

In part 1, we learned about hermicity-preserving linear maps, positive maps, k-positive maps, and completely positive maps. Now let’s see what other types of linear maps have interesting equivalences through the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism. Recall that the notation C_Φ is used to represent the Choi matrix of the linear map Φ.

6. Entanglement Breaking Maps / Separable Quantum States

An entanglement breaking map is defined as a completely positive map Φ with the property that (id_n ⊗ Φ)(ρ) is a separable quantum state whenever ρ is a quantum state (i.e., a density operator). A separable quantum state σ is one that can be written in the form

where {p_i} forms a probability distribution (i.e., p_i ≥ 0 for all i and the p_i‘s sum to 1) and each σ_i and τ_i is a density operator. It turns out that the Choi-Jamiolkowski equivalence for entanglement-breaking maps is very natural — Φ is entanglement breaking if and only if C_Φ is separable. Because it is known that determining whether or not a given state is separable is NP-HARD [1], it follows that determining whether or not a given linear map is entanglement breaking is also NP-HARD. Nonetheless, there are several nice characterizations of entanglement breaking maps. For example, Φ is entanglement breaking if and only if it can be written in the form

where each operator A_i has rank 1 (recall from Section 4 of the previous post that every completely positive map can be written in this form for some operators A_i — the rank 1 condition is what makes the map entanglement breaking). For more properties of entanglement breaking maps, the interested reader is encouraged to read [2].

7. k-Partially Entanglement Breaking Maps / Quantum States with Schmidt Number at Most k

The natural generalization of entanglement breaking maps are k-partially entanglement breaking maps, which are completely positive maps Φ with the property that (id_n ⊗ Φ)(ρ) always has Schmidt number [3] at most k for any density operator ρ. Recall that an operator has Schmidt number 1 if and only if it is separable, so the k = 1 case recovers exactly the entanglement breaking maps of Section 6. The set of operators associated with the k-partially entanglement breaking maps via the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism are exactly what we would expect: the operators with Schmidt number no larger than k. In fact, pretty much all of the properties of entanglement breaking maps generalize in a completely natural way to this situation. For example, a map is k-partially entanglement breaking if and only if it can be written in the form

where each operator A_i has rank no greater than k. For more information about k-partially entanglement breaking maps, the interested reader is pointed to [4]. Additionally, there is an interesting geometric relationship between k-positive maps (see Section 5 of the previous post) and k-partially entanglement breaking maps that is explored in this note and in [5].

8. Unital Maps / Operators with Left Partial Trace Equal to Identity

A linear map Φ is said to be unital if it sends the identity operator to the identity operator — that is, if Φ(I_n) = I_m. It is a simple exercise in linear algebra to show that Φ is unital if and only if

where Tr₁ denotes the partial trace over the first subsystem. In fact, it is not difficult to show that Tr₁(C_Φ) always equals exactly Φ(I_n).

9. Trace-Preserving Maps / Operators with Right Partial Trace Equal to Identity

In quantum information theory, maps that are trace-preserving (i.e., maps Φ such that Tr(Φ(X)) = Tr(X) for every operator X ∈ M_n) are of particular interest because quantum channels are modeled by completely positive trace-preserving maps (see Section 4 of the previous post to learn about completely positive maps). Well, some simple linear algebra shows that the map Φ is trace-preserving if and only if

where Tr₂ denotes the partial trace over the second subsystem. The reason for the close relationship between this property and the property of Section 8 is that unital maps and trace-preserving maps are dual to each other in the Hilbert-Schmidt inner product.

10. Completely Co-Positive Maps / Positive Partial Transpose Operators

A map Φ such that T○Φ is completely positive, where T represents the transpose map, is called a completely co-positive map. Thanks to Section 4 of the previous post, we know that Φ is completely co-positive if and only if the Choi matrix of T○Φ is positive semi-definite. Another way of saying this is that

This condition says that the operator C_Φ has positive partial transpose (or PPT), a property that is of great interest in quantum information theory because of its connection with the problem of determining whether or not a given quantum state is separable. In particular, any quantum state that is separable must have positive partial transpose (a condition that has become known as the Peres-Horodecki criterion). If n = 2 and m ≤ 3, then the converse is also true: any PPT state is necessarily separable [6]. It follows via our equivalences of Sections 4 and 6 that any entanglement breaking map is necessarily completely co-positive. Conversely, if n = 2 and m ≤ 3 then any map that is both completely positive and completely co-positive must be entanglement breaking.

11. Entanglement Binding Maps / Bound Entangled States

A bound entangled state is a state that is entangled (i.e., not separable) yet can not be transformed via local operations and classical communication to a pure maximally entangled state. In other words, they are entangled but have zero distillable entanglement. Currently, the only states that are known to be bound entangled are states with positive partial transpose — it is an open question whether or not other such states exist.

An entanglement binding map [7] is a completely positive map Φ such that (id_n ⊗ Φ)(ρ) is bound entangled for any quantum state ρ. It turns out that a map is entanglement binding if and only if its Choi matrix C_Φ is bound entangled. Thus, via the result of Section 10 we see that a map is entanglement binding if it is both completely positive and completely co-positive. It is currently unknown if there exist other entanglement binding maps.

References:

1. L. Gurvits, Classical deterministic complexity of Edmonds’ Problem and quantum entanglement, Proceedings of the thirty-fifth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing, 10-19 (2003). arXiv:quant-ph/0303055v1
2. M. Horodecki, P. W. Shor, M. B. Ruskai, General Entanglement Breaking Channels, Rev. Math. Phys 15, 629–641 (2003). arXiv:quant-ph/0302031v2
3. B. Terhal, P. Horodecki, A Schmidt number for density matrices, Phys. Rev. A Rapid Communications Vol. 61, 040301 (2000). arXiv:quant-ph/9911117v4
4. D. Chruscinski, A. Kossakowski, On partially entanglement breaking channels, Open Sys. Information Dyn. 13, 17–26 (2006). arXiv:quant-ph/0511244v1
5. L. Skowronek, E. Stormer, K. Zyczkowski, Cones of positive maps and their duality relations, J. Math. Phys. 50, 062106 (2009). arXiv:0902.4877v1 [quant-ph]
6. M. Horodecki, P. Horodecki, R. Horodecki, Separability of Mixed States: Necessary and Sufficient Conditions, Physics Letters A 223, 1–8 (1996). arXiv:quant-ph/9605038v2
7. P. Horodecki, M. Horodecki, R. Horodecki, Binding entanglement channels, J.Mod.Opt. 47, 347–354 (2000). arXiv:quant-ph/9904092v1

The Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism is an isomorphism between linear maps from M_n to M_m and operators living in the tensor product space M_n ⊗ M_m. Given any linear map Φ : M_n → M_m, we can define the Choi matrix of Φ to be

It turns out that this association between Φ and C_Φ defines an isomorphism, which has become known as the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism. Because much is already known about linear operators, the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism provides a simple way of studying linear maps on operators — just study the associated linear operators instead. Thus, since there does not seem to be a list compiled anywhere of all of the known associations through this isomorphism, I figure I might as well start one here. I’m planning on this being a two-parter post because there’s a lot to be said.

1. All Linear Maps / All Operators

By the very fact that we’re talking about an isomorphism, it follows that the set of all linear maps from M_n to M_m corresponds to the set of all linear operators in M_n ⊗ M_m. One can then use the singular value decomposition on the Choi matrix of the linear map Φ to see that we can find sets of operators {A_i} and {B_i} such that

To construct the operators A_i and B_i, simply reshape the left singular vectors and right singular vectors of the Choi matrix and multiply the A_i operators by the corresponding singular values. An alternative (and much more mathematically-heavy) method of proving this representation of Φ is to use the Generalized Stinespring Dilation Theorem [1, Theorem 8.4].

2. Hermicity-Preserving Maps / Hermitian Operators

The set of Hermicity-Preserving linear maps (that is, maps Φ such that Φ(X) is Hermitian whenever X is Hermitian) corresponds to the set of Hermitian operators. By using the spectral decomposition theorem on C_Φ and recalling that Hermitian operators have real eigenvalues, it follows that there are real constants {λ_i} such that

Again, the trick is to construct each A_i so that the vectorization of A_i is the i^th eigenvector of C_Φ and λ_i is the corresponding eigenvalue. Because every Hermitian operator can be written as the difference of two positive semidefinite operators, it is a simple corollary that every Hermicity-Preserving Map can be written as the difference of two completely positive linear maps — this will become more clear after Section 4. It is also clear that we can absorb the magnitude of the constant λ_i into the operator A_i, so we can write any Hermicity-preserving linear map in the form above, where each λ_i = ±1.

3. Positive Maps / Block Positive Operators

A linear map Φ is said to be positive if Φ(X) is positive semidefinite whenever X is positive semidefinite. A useful characterization of these maps is still out of reach and is currently a very active area of research in quantum information science and operator theory. The associated operators C_Φ are those that satisfy

In terms of quantum information, these operators are positive on separable states. In the world of operator theory, these operators are usually referred to as block positive operators. As of yet we do not have a quick deterministic method of testing whether or not an operator is block positive (and thus we do not have a quick deterministic way of testing whether or not a linear map is positive).

4. Completely Positive Maps / Positive Semidefinite Operators

The most famous class of linear maps in quantum information science, completely positive maps are maps Φ such that (id_k ⊗ Φ) is a positive map for any natural number k. That is, even if there is an ancillary system of arbitrary dimension, the map still preserves positivity. These maps were characterized in terms of their Choi matrix in the early ’70s [2], and it turns out that Φ is completely positive if and only if C_Φ is positive semidefinite. It follows from the spectral decomposition theorem (much like in Section 2) that Φ can be written as

Again, the A_i operators (which are known as Kraus operators) are obtained by reshaping the eigenvectors of C_Φ. It also follows (and was proved by Choi) that Φ is completely positive if and only if (id_n ⊗ Φ) is positive. Also note that, as there exists an orthonormal basis of eigenvectors of C_Φ, the A_i operators can be constructed so that Tr(A_i^*A_j) = δ_ij, the Kronecker delta. An alternative method of deriving the representation of Φ(X) is to use the Stinespring Dilation Theorem [1, Theorem 4.1] of operator theory.

5. k-Positive Maps / k-Block Positive Operators

Interpolating between the situations of Section 3 and Section 4 are k-positive maps. A map is said to be k-positive if (id_k ⊗ Φ) is a positive map. Thus, complete positivity of a map Φ is equivalent to Φ being k-positive for all natural numbers k, which is equivalent to Φ being n-positive. Positivity of Φ is the same as 1-positivity of Φ. Since we don’t even have effective methods for determining positivity of linear maps, it makes sense that we don’t have effective methods for determining k-positivity of linear maps, so they are still a fairly active area of research. It is known that Φ is k-positive if and only if

Operators of this type are referred to as k-block positive operators, and SR(x) denotes the Schmidt rank of the vector x. Because a vector has Schmidt rank 1 if and only if it is separable, it follows that this condition reduces to the condition that we saw in Section 3 for positive maps in the k = 1 case. Similarly, since all vectors have Schmidt rank less than or equal to n, it follows that Φ is n-positive if and only if C_Φ is positive semidefinite, which we saw in Section 4.

Update [October 23, 2009]: Part II of this post is now online.

References:

1. V. I. Paulsen, Completely Bounded Maps and Operator Algebras, Cambridge Studies in Advanced Mathematics 78, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003.
2. M.-D. Choi, Completely Positive Linear Maps on Complex Matrices, Lin. Alg. Appl, 285-290 (1975).