Entanglement-breaking channel

A channel is entanglement breaking when applying it to one side of every bipartite state always produces a separable state. Equivalently, its Choi matrix is separable, and equivalently it has a measure-and-prepare representation.

A quantum channel is entanglement breaking exactly when its Choi state is a separable quantum state. If $C_{\Lambda }={\sum }_a{p}_a{\sigma }_a\otimes {\tau }_a$, the Choi reconstruction formula gives a measure-and-prepare channel with POVM $E_a=d{p}_a{\tau }_a^T$. Conversely, applying an entanglement-breaking channel to a maximally entangled state produces a separable Choi state. Horodecki, Shor and Ruskai's entanglement-breaking channel paper develops the equivalences.

An entanglement-breaking channel admits a Kraus representation with rank-one Kraus operators $K_j=|a_j⟩⟨b_j|$. Its Choi state is a sum of positive tensor-product operators, hence separable. Conversely, spectral decompositions of each prepared state and each POVM effect in a measure-and-prepare channel produce rank-one Kraus operators. Trace preservation imposes ${\sum }_j\Vert a_j{\Vert }^2|b_j⟩⟨b_j|=I$.