Kubo-Ando Means and Rigidity of Quantum Positivity Cones

Abstract

We investigate the stability of quantum positivity cones under nonlinear operator means. Specifically, we examine how Kubo--Ando means interact with the separable, positive partial transpose (PPT), and Schmidt-number cones. By analyzing the curvature of operator monotone functions at the identity, we give a strict rigidity phenomenon: weighted arithmetic means are the only Kubo--Ando means that preserve the separable cone in all dimensions. We show that the strictly positive curvature of any non-arithmetic mean explicitly forces a violation of the PPT condition, even in the foundational two-qubit setting, and can strictly increase the Schmidt number of the resulting operator. Finally, using the Choi--Jamiołkowski correspondence, we translate these geometric obstructions to the map-theoretic setting, concluding that convex mixing is the uniquely permissible Kubo--Ando operation for preserving entanglement-breaking quantum channels.