The "classical-quantum" ($\mathit{cq}$) discord of a bipartite state $ρ^{AB}$ is the smallest difference between the mutual information $S(ρ^{A:B})$ of $ρ$ and that of $ρ$ after a measurement channel is applied on the $A$ system. Relating zero discord to the strong subadditivity of the Von Neumann entropy, Datta proved that a state has zero $\mathit{cq}$ discord iff and only if it can be written in the form $\sum_i p_i\, |i\rangle\langle i|\otimes ρ^B_i$ for $p_i$ a probability distribution, $|i\rangle$ a basis of the $A$ system and $ρ^B_i$ states of the $B$ system. We provide a simple proof of that same result using directly a theorem of Petz on channels that leave unchanged the relative entropy of two given states.
Quantum discord quantifies non-classical correlations in quantum states. We introduce discord for states in causal probabilistic theories, inspired by the original definition proposed in Ref. [17]. We show that the only probabilistic theory in which all states have null discord is classical probability theory. Non-null discord is then not just a quantum feature, but a generic signature of non-classicality.
Quantum information resources quantified by non-zero discord are ubiquitous for the continuous-variables bipartite systems. Complementary to this, we formally construct a model characterized by zero two-way discord for arbitrarily long time interval. The model is classical in the sense it does not support quantum information processing. We point out some interesting physical features of the model.
We introduce the quantum-house effect, a non-local phenomenon which apparently does not require quantum discord to be present. It suffices for the effect if neither subsystem of a bipartite system is in a pure state. This way, the quantum-house effect completely fills the gap between trivial correlations and quantum discord. However, we discuss why the situation is more subtle than that, by showing that in a concrete cryptographic setting called "the quantum-house game", the ability to produce quantum discord is in fact necessary for the quantum-house effect to work. Then, we suggest a princip…
Mixtures of coherent states are commonly regarded as classical. Here we show that there is a quantum advantage in discriminating between coherent states in a mixture, implying the presence of quantum properties in the mixture, which are however not captured by commonly used non-classicality measures. We identify a set of desired properties for any non-classicality measure that aims to capture these quantum features, and define the discord potential CD, which we show to satisfy all those properties. We compare the discord potential with recently proposed coherence monotones, and prove that the …
Modern quantum information theory provides new tools for investigating the decoherence-induced "classicality" of open quantum systems. Recent observation that almost all quantum states bear non-classical correlations [A. Ferraro {\it et al}, Phys. Rev. A {\bf 81}, 052318 (2010)] distinguishes the zero-discord classicality essentially as a pathology of the Markovian bipartite-systems realm. Nevertheless, we formally construct such a classical model and its variant that represents a matter-of-principle formal proof, i.e. a sufficient condition for the, otherwise not obvious, existence of the Mar…
We argue that the geometric discord introduced in [B. Dakic, V. Vedral, and C. Brukner, Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 190502 (2010)] is not a good measure for the quantumness of correlations, as it can increase even under trivial local reversible operations of the party whose classicality/non-classicality is not tested. On the other hand it is known that the standard, mutual-information based discord does not suffer this problem; a simplified proof of such a fact is given.
We propose a measure of non-classical correlations in bipartite quantum states based on local unitary operations. We prove the measure is non-zero if and only if the quantum discord is non-zero; this is achieved via a new characterization of zero discord states in terms of the state's correlation matrix. Moreover, our scheme can be extended to ensure the same relationship holds even with a generalized version of quantum discord in which higher-rank projective measurements are allowed. We next derive a closed form expression for our scheme in the cases of Werner states and (2 x N)-dimensional s…
Recent observation that almost all quantum states bear non-classical correlations [A. Ferraro et al, Phys. Rev. A 81, 052328 (2010)] may seem to imply that the Markovian bipartite systems are practically deprived of zero discord states. Nevertheless, complementary to the result of Ferraro et al, we construct a model of a Markovian bipartite system providing zero discord for arbitrary long time interval, that we term 'Markovian classicality'. Our model represents a matter-of-principle formal proof, i.e. a sufficient condition for the, otherwise not obvious, existence of Markovian classicality. …
We consider two celebrated criteria for defining the non-classicality of bipartite bosonic quantum systems, the first stemming from information theoretic concepts and the second from physical constraints on the quantum phase-space. Consequently, two sets of allegedly classical states are singled out: i) the set C composed of the so called classical-classical (CC) states---separable states that are locally distinguishable and do not possess quantum discord; ii) the set P of states endowed with a positive P-representation (P-classical states)---mixture of Glauber coherent states that, e.g., fail…
Noisy quantum walks are studied from the perspective of comparing their quantumness as defined by two popular measures, measurement-induced disturbance (MID) and quantum discord (QD). While the former has an operational definition, unlike the latter, it also tends to overestimate non-classicality because of a lack of optimization over local measurements. Applied to quantum walks, we find that MID, while acting as a loose upper bound on QD, still tends to reflect correctly the trends in the behavior of the latter. However, there are regimes where its behavior is not indicative of non-classicali…
Two classically identical expressions for the mutual information generally differ when the two systems involved are quantum. We investigate this difference -- quantum discord -- and show that it can be used as a criterion for the classicality of the correlations. We also show that quantum discord can be used for describing the selection of the preferred, effectively classical, pointer states.
We investigate signatures of non-classicality in quantum states, in particular, those involved in the DQC1 model of mixed-state quantum computation [Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 5672 (1998)]. To do so, we consider two known non-classicality criteria. The first quantifies disturbance of a quantum state under locally noneffective unitary operations (LNU), which are local unitaries acting invariantly on a subsystem. The second quantifies measurement induced disturbance (MID) in the eigenbasis of the reduced density matrices. We study the role of both figures of non-classicality in the exponential speedup…
We investigate the implications of quantum Darwinism in a composite quantum system with interacting constituents exhibiting a decoherence-free subspace. We consider a two-qubit system coupled to an $N$-qubit environment via a dephasing interaction. For excitation preserving interactions between the system qubits, an analytical expression for the dynamics is obtained. It demonstrates that part of the system Hilbert space redundantly proliferates its information to the environment, while the remaining subspace is decoupled and preserves clear non-classical signatures. For measurements performed …
Quantum discord characterizes "non-classicality" of correlations in quantum mechanics. It has been proposed as the key resource present in certain quantum communication tasks and quantum computational models without containing much entanglement. We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of non-zero quantum discord for any dimensional bipartite states. This condition is easily experimentally implementable. Based on this, we propose a geometrical way of quantifying quantum discord. For two qubits this results in a closed form of expression for discord. We apply our results…
Quantum discord expresses a fundamental non-classicality of correlations more general than quantum entanglement. We combine the no-local-broadcasting theorem, semidefinite-programming characterizations of quantum fidelity and quantum separability, and a recent breakthrough result of Fawzi and Renner about quantum Markov chains to provide a hierarchy of computationally efficient lower bounds to quantum discord. Such a hierarchy converges to the surprisal of measurement recoverability introduced by Seshadreesan and Wilde, and provides a faithful lower bound to quantum discord already at the lowe…
Discordant states appear in a large number of quantum phenomena and seem to be a good indicator of divergence from classicality. While there is evidence that they are essential for a quantum algorithm to have an advantage over a classical one, their precise role is unclear. We examine the role of discord in quantum algorithms using the paradigmatic framework of `restricted distributed quantum gates' and show that manipulating discordant states using local operations has an associated cost in terms of entanglement and communication resources. Changing discord reduces the total correlations and …
Recent measures of nonclassical correlations are motivated by different notions of classicality and operational means. Quantum discord has received a great deal of attention in studies involving quantum computation, metrology, dynamics, many-body physics, and thermodynamics. In this article I show how quantum discord is different from quantum entanglement from a pedagogical point of view. I begin with a pedagogical introduction to quantum entanglement and quantum discord, followed by a historical review of quantum discord. Next, I give a novel definition of quantum discord in terms of any clas…
We define a new measure of quantum correlations in bipartite quantum systems given by the Bures distance of the system state to the set of classical states with respect to one subsystem, that is, to the states with zero quantum discord. Our measure is a geometrical version of the quantum discord. As the latter it quantifies the degree of non-classicality in the system. For pure states it is identical to the geometric measure of entanglement. We show that for mixed states it coincides with the optimal success probability of an ambiguous quantum state discrimination task. Moreover, the closest z…
We analyse the generation of quantum discord by means of the dynamical Casimir effect in superconducting waveguides modulated by superconducting quantum interferometric devices. We show that for realistic experimental parameters, the conditions for the existence of quantum discord are less demanding than the previously considered for quantum entanglement or non-classicality. The states with non-zero discord and zero entanglement generated by the dynamical Casimir effect are a useful resource for quantum cryptography.
The notion of quantum discord introduced by Ollivier and Zurek [Phys. Rev. Lett 88, 017901 (2001)] (see also Henderson and Vedral [J. Phys. A 34, 6899 (2001)]) has attracted increasing attention, in recent years, as an entropic quantifier of non-classical features pertaining to the correlations exhibited by bipartite quantum systems. Here we generalize the notion so as to encompass power-law q-entropies (that reduce to the standard Shannon entropy in the limit $q \to 1$) and study the concomitant consequences. The ensuing, new discord-like measures we advance describe aspects of non-classicali…
Macroscopic behavior such as the lack of interference patterns has been attributed to "decoherence", a word with several possible definitions such as (1) the loss of off-diagonal density matrix elements, (2) the flow of information to the environment, (3) the loss of complementary information, and (4) the loss of the ability to create entanglement in a measurement. In this article, we attempt to unify these distinct definitions by providing general quantitative connections between them, valid for all finite-dimensional quantum systems or quantum processes. The most important application of our…
This paper establishes a direct, robust and intimate connection between (i) non classicality tests for various quantum features, e.g., non-Boolean logic, quantum coherence, nonlocality, quantum entanglement, quantum discord; (ii) negative probability, and (iii) anomalous weak values. It has been shown [Adhikary et al. Eur. Phys. J. D, 74(68):68, 2020] that nonexistence of a classical joint probability scheme gives rise to sufficiency conditions for nonlocality, a nonclassical feature not restricted to quantum mechanics. The conditions for nonclassical features of quantum mechanics are obtained…
In the context of bipartite bosonic systems, two notions of classicality of correlations can be defined: P-classicality, based on the properties of the Glauber-Sudarshan P-function; and C-classicality, based on the entropic quantum discord. It has been shown that these two notions are maximally inequivalent in a static (metric) sense -- as they coincide only on a set of states of zero measure. We extend and reinforce quantitatively this inequivalence by addressing the dynamical relation between these types of non-classicality in a paradigmatic quantum-optical setting: the linear mixing at a be…
The non-classical nature of quantum states, often illustrated using entanglement measures or quantum discord, constitutes a resource for quantum information protocols. However, the non-classicality of a quantum system cannot be encapsulated as a property of the state alone, as the set of available measurements used to extract information on the system is typically restricted. In this work we study how the non-classicality of quantum measurements, quantified via their incompatibility, is influenced by quantum noise and, further, how a non-Markovian environment may help us in maintaining the mea…
The fact that not all measurements can be carried out simultaneously is a peculiar feature of quantum mechanics and responsible for many key phenomena in the theory, such as complementarity or uncertainty relations. For the special case of projective measurements quantum behavior can be characterized by the commutator but for generalized measurements it is not easy to decide whether two measurements can still be understood in classical terms or whether they show already quantum features. We prove that generalized measurements which do not fulfill the notion of joint measurability are nonclassi…
Generalized quantum discord $(D_q)$, Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering $(S)$, entanglement $(E)$, and Bell nonlocality ($N$), are logically distinct quantifiers of quantum correlations. All these measures capture nonclassical aspects of quantum states and play some role as resources in quantum information processing. In this work, we look for the hierarchy satisfied by these quantum correlation witnesses for a class of two-qubit states. We show that $N \triangleright S\triangleright E\triangleright D_q$, meaning that nonlocality implies steering, which in turn implies entanglement, which then i…
Deterministic quantum computation with one qubit (DQC1) is iconic in highlighting that exponential quantum speedup may be achieved with negligible entanglement. Its discovery catalyzed heated study of general quantum resources, and various conjectures regarding their role in DQC1's performance advantage. Coherence and discord are prominent candidates, respectively characterizing non-classicality within localized and correlated systems. Here we realize DQC1 within a superconducting system, engineered such that the dynamics of coherence and discord can be tracked throughout its execution. We exp…
More than a century after the inception of quantum theory, the question of which traits and phenomena are fundamentally quantum remains under debate. Here we give an answer to this question for temporal processes which are probed sequentially by means of projective measurements of the same observable. Defining classical processes as those that can---in principle---be simulated by means of classical resources only, we fully characterize the set of such processes. Based on this characterization, we show that for non-Markovian processes (i.e., processes with memory), the absence of coherence does…
We investigate the role of coherence and Markovianity in finding an answer to the question whether the outcomes of a projectively measured quantum stochastic process are compatible with a classical stochastic process. For this purpose we put forward an operationally motivated definition of incoherent dynamics applicable to any open system's dynamics. For non-degenerate observables described by rank-1 projective measurements we show that classicality always implies incoherent dynamics, whereas the converse is only true for invertible Markovian (but not necessarily time-homogeneous) dynamics. Fo…
We study the non-Markovian effect on the dynamics of the quantum discord by exactly solving a model consisting of two independent qubits subject to two zero-temperature non-Markovian reservoirs, respectively. Considering the two qubits initially prepared in Bell-like or extended Werner-like states, we show that there is no occurrence of the sudden death, but only instantaneous disappearance of the quantum discord at some time points, in comparison to the entanglement sudden death in the same range of the parameters of interest. It implies that the quantum discord is more useful than the entang…
Understanding the demarcation line between classical and quantum is an important issue in modern physics. The development of such an understanding requires a clear picture of the various concurrent notions of `classicality' in quantum theory presently in use. Here, we focus on the relationship between Kolmogorov consistency of measurement statistics -- the foundational footing of classical stochastic processes in standard probability theory -- and the commutativity (or absence thereof) of measurement operators -- a concept at the core of quantum theory. Kolmogorov consistency implies that the …
We highlight an information-theoretic meaning of quantum discord as the gap between the ac- cessible information and the Holevo bound in the framework of ensemble of quantum states. This complementary relationship implies that a large amount of pre-existing arguments about the evaluation of quantum discord can be directly applied to the accessible information and vice versa. For an ensemble of two pure qubit states, we show that one can evade the optimization problem with the help of the Koashi-Winter relation. Further, for the general case (two mixed qubit states), we recover the main results…
When two quantum systems are coupled via a mediator, their dynamics has traces of non-classical properties of the mediator. We show how this observation can be effectively utilised to study the quantum nature of materials without well-established structure. A concrete example considered is Sr$_{14}$Cu$_{24}$O$_{41}$. Measurements of low temperature magnetic and thermal properties of this compound were explained with long-range coupling of unpaired spins through dimerised spin chains. We first show that the required coupling is not provided by the spin chain alone and give alternative compact t…
We exploit quantum discord (and geometric discord) to detect quantum correlations present in a well-known communication model called quantum random access codes (QRACs), which has a variety of applications in areas ranging form quantum communication complexity, network coding, information causality, to security proof of QKD protocol. In spite of the fact that there is no entanglement between the two parts involved in this model, analytical derivation shows that the quantum discord is nonzero and highlights that quantum discord might be regarded as a figure of merit to characterize the quantum …
It has been shown that the primordial perturbations sourced by inflation are driven to classicality by unitary evolution alone. However, their coupling with the environment such as photons and subsequent decoherence renders the cosmological correlations quantum, losing primordial information in the process. We argue that the quantumness of the resulting cosmological correlations is given by quantum discord, which captures non-classical behavior beyond quantum entanglement. By considering the environment as a quantum channel in which primordial information contained in the perturbations is tran…
We present a direct relation, based upon a monogamic principle, between entanglement of formation (EOF) and quantum discord (QD), showing how they are distributed in an arbitrary tripartite pure system. By extending it to a paradigmatic situation of a bipartite system coupled to an environment, we demonstrate that the EOF and the QD obey a conservation relation. By means of this relation we show that in the deterministic quantum computer with one pure qubit the protocol has the ability to rearrange the EOF and the QD, which implies that quantum computation can be understood on a different basi…
Quantum correlations may be measured by means of the distance of the state to the subclass of states $Ω$ having well defined classical properties. In particular, a geometric measure of asymmetric discord [Dakic et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 190502 (2010)] was recently defined as the Hilbert-Schmidt distance of a given two-qubit state to the closest classical-quantum (CQ) correlated state. We analyze a geometric measure of symmetric discord defined as the Hilbert-Schmidt distance of a given state to the closest classical-classical (CC) correlated state. The optimal member of $Ω$ is just special…
One of the best signatures of nonclassicality in a quantum system is the existence of correlations that have no classical counterpart. Different methods for quantifying the quantum and classical parts of correlations are amongst the more actively-studied topics of quantum information theory over the past decade. Entanglement is the most prominent of these correlations, but in many cases unentangled states exhibit nonclassical behavior too. Thus distinguishing quantum correlations other than entanglement provides a better division between the quantum and classical worlds, especially when consid…
We introduce a model for a two configurations system, and we study the transition from quantum to classical behaviour. We first consider the effect of the interaction with the environment as an external noise and we show that it produces decoherence and suppression of tunnelling. These features are widely accepted as definition of classicality, while we believe that classicality implies that quantum delocalized states spontaneously evolve into localized ones. We than show that this evolution take place only when both noise and non linearity in the equations are present.
The threshold between classical and nonclassical two-qubit states is drawn at the place when these states can no longer be described by classical correlations, i.e., quantum discord or entanglement appear. However, to check if the correlations are classical (in terms of quantum discord and entanglement) it is sufficient to witness the lack of quantum discord because its zero value implies the lack of entanglement. We explain how the indicator of quantum discord introduced by Girolami and Adesso [Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 150403 (2012)] can be practically measured in linear-optical systems using st…
Quantum discord is an optimal resource for the quantification of classical and non-classical correlations as compared to other related measures. Geometric measure of quantum discord is another measure of quantum correlations. Recently, the geometric quantum discord for multipartite states has been introduced by Jianwei Xu [arxiv:quant/ph.1205.0330]. Motivated from the recent study [Ann. Phys. 327 (2012) 851] for the bipartite systems, I have investigated global quantum discord (QD) and geometric quantum discord (GQD) under the influence of external environments for different multipartite state…
Quantum Darwinism explains the emergence of classical reality from the underlying quantum reality by the fact that a quantum system is observed indirectly, by looking at parts of its environment, so that only specific information about the system that is redundantly proliferated to many parts of the environment becomes accessible and objective. However it is not clear under what conditions this mechanism holds true. Here we rigorously prove that the emergence of classicality is a general feature of any quantum dynamics: observers who acquire information about a quantum system indirectly have a…
We introduce a monogamy inequality for quantum correlations, which implies that the sum of pairwise quantum correlations is upper limited by the amount of multipartite quantum correlations as measured by the global quantum discord. This monogamy bound holds either for pure or mixed quantum states provided that bipartite quantum discord does not increase under discard of subsystems. We illustrate the monogamy behavior for multipartite pure states with Schmidt decomposition as well as for W-GHZ mixed states. As a by-product, we apply the monogamy bound to investigate residual multipartite correl…
Deviations from classical physics when distant quantum systems become correlated are interesting both fundamentally and operationally. There exist situations where the correlations enable collaborative tasks that are impossible within the classical formalism. Here, we consider the efficiency of quantum computation protocols compared to classical ones as a benchmark for separating quantum and classical resources and argue that the computational advantage of collaborative quantum protocols in the discrete variable domain implies the nonclassicality of correlations. By analysing a toy model, it t…
We investigate the squeezing of primordial gravitational waves (PGWs) in terms of quantum discord. We construct a classical state of PGWs without quantum discord and compare it with the Bunch-Davies vacuum. Then it is shown that the oscillatory behavior of the angular-power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations induced by PGWs can be the signature of the quantum discord of PGWs. In addition, we discuss the effect of quantum decoherence on the entanglement and the quantum discord of PGWs for super-horizon modes. For the state of PGWs with decoherence effect, we examine …
Quantum measurement is ultimately a physical process, resulting from an interaction between the measured system and a measuring apparatus. Considering the physical process of measurement within a thermodynamic context naturally raises the following question: How can the work and heat be interpreted? In the present paper we model the measurement process for an arbitrary discrete observable as a measurement scheme. Here the system to be measured is first unitarily coupled with an apparatus and subsequently the compound system is objectified with respect to a pointer observable, thus producing de…
Sharing correlated random variables is a resource for a number of information theoretic tasks such as privacy amplification, simultaneous message passing, secret sharing and many more. In this article, we show that to establish such a resource called shared randomness, quantum systems provide an advantage over their classical counterpart. Precisely, we show that appropriate albeit fixed measurements on a shared two-qubit state can generate correlations which cannot be obtained from any possible state on two classical bits. In a resource theoretic set-up, this feature of quantum systems can be …
Quantum entanglement is a form of correlation between quantum particles that cannot be increased via local operations and classical communication. It has therefore been proposed that an increment of quantum entanglement between probes that are interacting solely via a mediator implies non-classicality of the mediator. Indeed, under certain assumptions regarding the initial state, entanglement gain between the probes indicates quantum coherence in the mediator. Going beyond such assumptions, there exist other initial states which produce entanglement between the probes via only local interactio…
We analyse the nature of spontaneous symmetry breaking in complex quantum systems by investigating the long-standing conjecture that the maximally symmetry-breaking quantum ground states are the most classical ones corresponding to a globally ordered phase. We make this argument quantitatively precise by comparing different local and global indicators of classicality and quantumness, respectively in symmetry-breaking and symmetry-preserving quantum ground states. We first discuss how naively comparing local, pairwise entanglement and discord apparently leads to the opposite conclusion. Indeed,…
Any tripartite state which saturates the strong subadditivity relation for the quantum entropy is defined as the Markov state.A tripartite pure state describing an open system, its environment and their purifying system isa pure Markov state iff the bipartite marginal state of purifying system and environment is a product state. It has been shown that as long as the purification of the input system-environment state is a pure Markov state the reduced dynamics of the open system can be described, on the support of initial system state, by a quantum channel for every joint unitary evolution of t…
