Compound channels, transition expectations, and liftings (Q1282150)

The notion of lifting is introduced in Sec. 1 as a generalization of the notion of compound state introduced by the second author, and it is argued that this notions allows for a unified approach to the problems of signal transmission via quantum channel and of quantum measurement. The dual of a linear lifting is a transition expectation in the sense of the first author. In Sec. 2 a characterization of liftings whose range is contained in the closed convex hull of product states is given, and it is proved that the corresponding Markov chain is uniquely determined by a classical generalization of both the quantum walks and the locally diagonalizable states (Sec. 3). In Sec. 4 these results are applied to the beam splitting process in optical communication. The error probability in this process is rederived from the viewpoint of liftings and transition expectations. Some results concerning the case of sqeezing are also obtained.