Operator-sum representation for bosonic Gaussian channels

Operator-sum or Kraus representations for single-mode bosonic Gaussian channels are developed, and several of their consequences explored. The fact that the two-mode metaplectic operators acting as unitary purification of these channels do not, in their canonical form, mix the position and momentum variables is exploited to present a procedure which applies uniformly to all families in the Holevo classification. In this procedure the Kraus operators of every quantum-limited Gaussian channel can be simply read off from the matrix elements of a corresponding metaplectic operator. Kraus operators are employed to bring out, in the Fock basis, the manner in which the antilinear, unphysical matrix transposition map when accompanied by injection of a threshold classical noise becomes a physical channel, denoted D(kappa) in the Holevo classification. The matrix transposition channels D(kappa), D(kappa(-1)) turn out to be a dual pair in the sense that their Kraus operators are related by the adjoint operation. The amplifier channel with amplification factor. and the beam-splitter channel with attenuation factor kappa(-1) turn out to be mutually dual in the same sense. The action of the quantum-limited attenuator and amplifier channels as simply scaling maps on suitable quasiprobabilities in phase space is examined in the Kraus picture. Consideration of cumulants is used to examine the issue of fixed points. The semigroup property of the amplifier and attenuator families leads in both cases to a Zeno-like effect arising as a consequence of interrupted evolution. In the cases of entanglement-breaking channels a description in terms of rank 1 Kraus operators is shown to emerge quite simply. In contradistinction, it is shown that there is not even one finite rank operator in the entire linear span of Kraus operators of the quantum-limited amplifier or attenuator families, an assertion far stronger than the statement that these are not entanglement breaking channels. A characterization of extremality in terms of Kraus operators, originally due to Choi, is employed to show that all quantum-limited Gaussian channels are extremal. The fact that almost every noisy Gaussian channel can be realized as a product of a pair of quantum-limited channels is used to construct a discrete set of linearly independent Kraus operators for these noisy Gaussian channels, including the classical noise channel, and these Kraus operators have a particularly simple structure.