Quantum relative positioning in Hilbert space

Abstract

A new class of state transformations that are quantum mechanically prohibited is introduced. These can be seen as the generalization of the universal-NOT transformation which, for all pure inputs state of a given Hilbert space produces pure outputs whose projection on the original state is fixed to a value smaller than one. The case of not pure output states is also addressed. We give an application of these transformations in the context of separability criteria.