Anti-isomorphisms and the naturality of channel--state duality

Abstract

Channel--state duality identifies completely positive maps with bipartite states. Its generalisation to von Neumann algebras is known to produce states not on $\mathcal{M}\bar{\otimes}\mathcal{N}$ but on the tensor product of $\mathcal{M}$ with the \emph{opposite} algebra of $\mathcal{N}$, or equivalently with a commutant; returning to $\mathcal{N}$ itself requires a transposition, and it has been observed that this step typically fails. We determine exactly when it does not fail. Our main result is that a Choi--Jamiołkowski type isomorphism which is natural in the first algebra exists if and only if the second algebra is $*$-anti-isomorphic to itself. Naturality cannot be dropped: whenever $\mathcal{M}$ is anti-isomorphic to itself such an isomorphism exists for trivial reasons, since the order structure of a predual is a Jordan invariant and cannot distinguish an algebra from its opposite. Consequently no such correspondence exists for the type III factors constructed by Connes. We show in addition that the domain admits no description in terms of properties of individual maps: the space of all normal maps with the operator norm is too large, and neither complete boundedness nor complete positivity cuts it down to the right size.