Purity and State Fidelity of Quantum Channels via Hamiltonians

We associate to every quantum channel $T$ acting on a Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}$ a pair of Hamiltonian operators over the symmetric subspace of $\mathcal{H}^{\otimes 2}$. The expectation values of these Hamiltonians over symmetric product states give either the purity or the pure state fidelity of $T$. This allows us to analytically compute these measures for a wide class of channels, and to identify states that are optimal with respect to these measures.