## Double Dilation ≠ Double Mixing (extended abstract)

 Maaike Zwart (University of Oxford) Bob Coecke (University of Oxford)

 Density operators are one of the key ingredients of quantum theory. They can be constructed in two ways: via a convex sum of 'doubled kets' (i.e. mixing), and by tracing out part of a 'doubled' two-system ket (i.e. dilation). Both constructions can be iterated, yielding new mathematical species that have already found applications outside physics. However, as we show in this paper, the iterated constructions no longer yield the same mathematical species. Hence, the constructions 'mixing' and 'dilation' themselves are by no means equivalent. Concretely, when applying the Choi-Jamiolkowski isomorphism to the second iteration, dilation produces arbitrary symmetric bipartite states, while mixing only yields the disentangled ones. All results are proven using diagrams, and hence they hold not only for quantum theory, but also for a much more general class of process theories.

In Bob Coecke and Aleks Kissinger: Proceedings 14th International Conference on Quantum Physics and Logic (QPL 2017), Nijmegen, The Netherlands, 3-7 July 2017, Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science 266, pp. 133–146.
This paper is the shorter version of https://arxiv.org/abs/1704.02309; all missing proofs can be found in the full version.
Published: 27th February 2018.

 ArXived at: http://dx.doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.266.9 bibtex PDF
References in reconstructed bibtex, XML and HTML format (approximated).
 Comments and questions to: eptcs@eptcs.org For website issues: webmaster@eptcs.org