Abstract
Degradable quantum channels are among the only channels whose quantum and private classical capacities are known. As such, determining the structure of these channels is a pressing open question in quantum information theory. We give a comprehensive review of what is currently known about the structure of degradable quantum channels, including a number of new results as well as alternate proofs of some known results. In the case of qubits, we provide a complete characterization of all degradable channels with two dimensional output, give a new proof that a qubit channel with two Kraus operators is either degradable or anti-degradable and present a complete description of anti-degradable unital qubit channels with a new proof. For higher output dimensions we explore the relationship between the output and environment dimensions ( and respectively) of degradable channels. For several broad classes of channels we show that they can be modeled with a environment that is "small" in the sense . Perhaps surprisingly, we also present examples of degradable channels with ``large'' environments, in the sense that the minimal dimension . Indeed, one can have . In the case of channels with diagonal Kraus operators, we describe the subclass which are complements of entanglement breaking channels. We also obtain a number of results for channels in the convex hull of conjugations with generalized Pauli matrices. However, a number of open questions remain about these channels and the more general case of random unitary channels.