Christandl's PPT2^2 conjecture for entanglement-breaking compositions

Let Φ1,Φ2Tn(C)\Phi_1,\Phi_2\in\mathcal{T}_n(\mathbb{C}) be linear maps. A map Φ\Phi is PPT when both Φ\Phi and ΦT\Phi\circ\mathsf{T} are completely positive, and it is entanglement breaking when [InΦ](Y)SEPn[I_n\otimes\Phi](Y)\in\operatorname{SEP}_n for every YHerm(CnCn)+Y\in\operatorname{Herm}(\mathbb{C}^n\otimes\mathbb{C}^n)_+. PPT2^2 conjecture. The composition Φ1Φ2\Phi_1\circ\Phi_2 of two arbitrary PPT linear maps Φ1,Φ2\Phi_1,\Phi_2 is entanglement breaking. Equivalently, if ρ1,ρ2Herm(CnCn)\rho_1,\rho_2\in\operatorname{Herm}(\mathbb{C}^n\otimes\mathbb{C}^n) are the corresponding Choi states and ρ1,ρ2DPSn(1)\rho_1,\rho_2\in\operatorname{DPS}^{(1)}_n, then

J(Φρ1Φρ2)SEPn.J(\Phi_{\rho_1}\circ\Phi_{\rho_2})\in\operatorname{SEP}_n.

Christandl posed this conjecture in 2012; it asks whether composing two PPT maps always destroys entanglement, and its resolution remains open.

Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Jonas Britz and Monique Laurent, “Semidefinite hierarchies for diagonal unitary invariant bipartite quantum states”, arXiv:2512.06551 (2026).

Additional references

6 papers in this index state this conjecture (2017–2025). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2207.02510, arXiv:2002.09614, arXiv:1807.01266, arXiv:1801.05542, arXiv:1710.08475.

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