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I found going from the Choi-matrix of a quantum channel to the Choi-Kraus decomposition a bit difficult. I know that it follows from the eigen-decomposition of the Choi-matrix. But I struggle with both how this is done and how we derive the Kraus operators from this, both in the case of general channels and for specific channels.

I have tried to do this with the of "Amplitude damping channel" and end up with the Choi matrix $$ C_{N_{\gamma}}=\begin{bmatrix} 1 &0 &0 &\sqrt{1-\gamma}\\ 0&0&0&0\\ 0&0&\gamma&0\\\sqrt{1-\gamma}&0&0&1-\gamma \end{bmatrix} $$ But I don't know how to procede from here.

Any answers, general tips and where to read more would be appreciated.

glS
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Pink Elephants
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1 Answers1

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Decomposing $C_{N_\gamma}$ amounts to finding all non-zero eigenvalues as well as corresponding eigenvectors: Assume for now that we already found all eigenvalues $\lambda_j>0$ as well as normalized eigenvectors $v_j$ (if they correspond to the same eigenvalue let's assume that we already made them orthogonal via Gram-Schmidt). Then, because the matrix of interest is Hermitian we automatically obtain the decomposition $C_{N_{\gamma}}=\sum_j\lambda_j|v_j\rangle\langle v_j|$. Following the answers FDGod linked in their comment all we have to do from here is arrange the $v_j$ into matrices $V_j$ (via the inverse of the vectorization operation) which altogether yields Kraus operators $K_j:=\sqrt{\lambda_j}V_j$, as desired.

Now let us do some basic linear algebra to first determine the eigenvalues. Up to permutation (which does not change the spectrum as it is a similarity transformation) our matrix is of the form $$ \underbrace{\begin{pmatrix} 1&\sqrt{1-\gamma}\\ \sqrt{1-\gamma}&1-\gamma \end{pmatrix}}_{=:X}\oplus(\gamma)\oplus(0)\,. $$ Thus the eigenvalues of $C_{N_\gamma}$ are $\gamma,0,$ and whatever the eigenvalues of $X$ are. For the latter we compute $$ \begin{align} \det(\lambda\cdot{\bf1}-X)&=(\lambda-1)(\lambda-1+\gamma)-(1-\gamma)\\&=\lambda^2-\lambda+\gamma\lambda-\lambda\\&=\lambda(\lambda-2+\gamma) \end{align} $$ the roots of which are obviously $0$ and $2-\gamma$. (Note: A trained eye would see right away that $X$ is a rank-1 matrix so the only non-zero eigenvalue must be given by the trace). Either way this shows that the non-zero eigenvalues of $C_{N_\gamma}$ are $\gamma,2-\gamma$ whenever $\gamma\in(0,1]$, and $1$ if $\gamma=0$ (in which case $N_0$ is the identity so let us disregard this trivial case).

Next, the eigenvectors. For the eigenvalue $\gamma$, looking at $C_{N_\gamma}$ the corresponding (normalized) eigenvector is obviously $(0,0,1,0)^T$. For the second eigenvalue the problem boils down to finding the corresponding eigenvector for $X$, i.e. finding $v\in\mathbb C^2\setminus\{0\}$ such that $$ 0=((2-\gamma){\bf1}-X)v=\begin{pmatrix} -\sqrt{1-\gamma}( -\sqrt{1-\gamma}\,v_1+v_2 )\\-\sqrt{1-\gamma}\,v_1+v_2 \end{pmatrix}\,. $$ This linear system is solved, for example, by $v=(1,\sqrt{1-\gamma})^T$; again we could've taken a shortcut here by seeing that $X$ is rank-1 so $X=|v\rangle\langle v|$ where the entries of $v$ are necessarily the square root of the diagonal of $X$. Because $X$ "sits in" the first and last column of $C_{N_\gamma}$ the (normalized) eigenvector to the eigenvalue $2-\gamma$ reads $(1,0,0,\sqrt{1-\gamma})^T/\sqrt{2-\gamma}$.

All that is left to do now is to rearrange the eigenvectors into matrices $V_j$: $$ \begin{pmatrix}0\\0\\1\\0\end{pmatrix}\to V_1=\begin{pmatrix}0&1\\0&0\end{pmatrix}\\\frac1{\sqrt{2-\gamma}}\begin{pmatrix}1\\0\\0\\\sqrt{1-\gamma}\end{pmatrix}\to V_2=\frac1{\sqrt{2-\gamma}}\begin{pmatrix}1&0\\0&\sqrt{1-\gamma}\end{pmatrix} $$ This reproduces the well-known Kraus operators $K_j=\sqrt{\lambda_j}V_j$ of the amplitude damping channel: $$ \boxed{K_1=\begin{pmatrix}0&\sqrt\gamma\\0&0\end{pmatrix}\qquad K_2=\begin{pmatrix}1&0\\0&\sqrt{1-\gamma}\end{pmatrix}} $$

FDGod
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Frederik vom Ende
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