The purpose of this short note is to clarify and present a general version of an interesting observation by Piani and Mora (Physic. Rev. A 75, 012305 (2007)), linking complete positivity of linear maps on matrix algebras to decomposability of their ampliations. Let
Ai,
Ci be unital C*-algebras and let
αi be positive linear maps from
Ai to
Ci, i=1,2. We obtain conditions under which any positive map
β from the minimal C*-tensor product
A1⊗minA2 to
C1⊗minC2, such that $ α_1 \otimes α_2 \geq β$, factorizes as
β=γ⊗α2 for some positive map
γ. In particular we show that when
αi:Ai→B(Hi) are completely positive (CP) maps for some Hilbert spaces
Hi (i=1,2), and
α2 is a pure CP map and
β is a CP map so that
α1⊗α2−β is also CP, then
β=γ⊗α2 for some CP map
γ. We show that a similar result holds in the context of positive linear maps when
A2=C2=B(H) and
α2=id. As an application we extend \cite[IX Theorem]{PM}( revisited recently by Huber et al in \cite{HLLM}) to show that for any linear map
τ from a unital C*-algebra
A to a C*-algebra
C, if
τ⊗idk is decomposable for some
k≥2, where
idk is the identity map on the algebra
Mk(C) of
k×k matrices, then
τ is completely positive.