Foundations of Quantum Discord

Alessandro Ferraro, Leandro Aolita, Daniel Cavalcanti +2 more

Quantum discord quantifies nonclassical correlations in a quantum system including those not captured by entanglement. Thus, only states with zero discord exhibit strictly classical correlations. We prove that these states are negligible in the whole Hilbert space: typically a state picked out at random has positive discord and, given a state with zero discord, a generic arbitrarily small perturbation drives it to a positive-discord state. These results hold for any Hilbert-space dimension and have direct implications for quantum computation and for the foundations of the theory of open systems. In addition, we provide a simple necessary criterion for zero quantum discord. Finally, we show that, for almost all positive-discord states, an arbitrary Markovian evolution cannot lead to a sudden, permanent vanishing of discord.

Lucas C. Céleri, Jonas Maziero

Siwei Li, Xiaofen Huang

We investigate the redistribution of continuous-variable quantum discord within the framework of an expanding universe. We find that quantum discord exhibits stronger sensitivity to the spacetime expansion rate than to the expansion volume. As both the expansion rate and expansion volume increase, the initial quantum discord shared by the two bosonic modes decays, while quantum discord is induced in additional mode pairs by the underlying spacetime expansion, signaling a global redistribution of quantum correlations across the system. Specifically, the induced discord is largest for cross-observer bosonic-antibosonic pairs, followed by same-observer bosonic-antibosonic pairs, and smallest for the pair of antibosonic modes. Furthermore, our quantum discord analysis demonstrates that particles with lower momentum and optimal mass serve as more favorable candidates for extracting information about the expanding universe. This work substantially enriches the theoretical framework of quantum discord in expanding spacetimes, and provides new perspectives as well as a solid theoretical foundation for further investigations.

Yao Yao, Jingzheng Huang, Xu‐Bo Zou +1 more

Jianming Zhou, Xiaoli Hu, Naihuan Jing

Zhongxiao Wang, Bobo Wang

We discuss the symmetric quantum discord (SQD) for an arbitrary two-qubit state consisting of subsystems A and B and give the analysis formula of the symmetric quantum discord for the arbitrary two-qubit state. We also give the optimization process of the symmetric quantum discord for some states and obtain the symmetric quantum discord. We compare the quantum discord (QD) with the symmetric quantum discord, and find that the symmetric quantum discord is greater than the quantum discord. We also find that the symmetric quantum discord can be unequal to the quantum discord when the right quantum discord (measure on subsystem B) is equal to the left quantum discord (measure on subsystem A).