English

Geometry of depolarizing channels

Quantum Physics 2009-11-13 v1

Abstract

Depolarizing maps acting on an N dimensional system are completely positive maps resulting into compression of the Bloch ball along the different polarization directions. In the qubit case these maps are a convex sum of four extremal maps and form a simplex in the space of compression coefficients along the three polarization directions. We calculate the compression domain for three and four level systems. For a three level system the region has curved surfaces, but it is a simplex for a four level system. We conjecture that it is a simplex in the case of 2^n level systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0804.3100,
  title  = {Geometry of depolarizing channels},
  author = {Kuldeep Dixit and E. C. G. Sudarshan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0804.3100},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

7 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:32:42.289Z