Smooth manifold structure for extreme channels

Abstract

A quantum channel from a system A of dimension dA to a system B of dimension dB is a completely positive trace-preserving map from complex dA × dA to dB × dB matrices, and the set of all such maps with Kraus rank r has the structure of a smooth manifold. We describe this set in two ways. First, as a quotient space of (a subset of) the rdB × dA dimensional Stiefel manifold. Second, as the set of all Choi-states of a fixed rank r. These two descriptions are topologically equivalent. This allows us to show that the set of all Choi-states corresponding to extreme channels from system A to system B of a fixed Kraus rank r is a smooth submanifold of dimension 2rdAdB−dA2−r2 of the set of all Choi-states of rank r. As an application, we derive a lower bound on the number of parameters required for a quantum circuit topology to be able to approximate all extreme channels from A to B arbitrarily well.