Write . Conjugating by a Pauli matrix keeps its own Bloch component and reverses the other two; for example,
In the average of the four conjugations, the coefficient of every nonidentity Pauli matrix is zero. Consequently
The Pauli operator basis gives the Bloch representation of a qubit density operator.[ref]
This is the qubit Pauli twirl, the dimension-two case of the Heisenberg-Weyl twirling channel. The argument uses only trace one, so it also works for mixed qubit inputs. The preparation label must be forgotten: conditioning on the label would retain a known pure branch rather than the maximally mixed state obtained by the ensemble average.