On the Extremality of the Tensor Product of Quantum Channels

Abstract: Completely positive and trace preserving (CPT) maps are important for Quantum Information Theory, because they describe a broad class of of transformations of quantum states. There are also two other related classes of maps, the unital completely positive (UCP) maps and the unital completely positive and trace preserving (UCPT) maps. For these three classes, the maps from a finite dimensional Hilbert space $X$ to another one $Y$ is a compact convex set and, as such, it is the convex hull of its extreme points. The extreme points of these convex sets are yet not well understood. In this article we investigate the preservation of extremality under the tensor product. We prove that extremality is preserved for CPT or UCP maps, but for UCPT it is not always preserved.