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arXiv:2303.11167 · Physical Review Applied

Quantum discord witness with uncharacterized devices

Rong Wang, Yao Yao, Zhen-Qiang Yin

Published May 14, 2025• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Quantum discord represents a correlation beyond classicality that could be useful for many quantum information tasks, and therefore is viewed as a valuable quantum resource. Theoretically, whether a bipartite quantum state has a non-zero amount of quantum discord or not can be determined once its density matrix is given. Experimentally, however, it is not easy to perform a reliable tomography on the state, especially when considering the imperfection of devices and the high dimensionality of system. Here, inspired by the so-called dimension witness, we propose a new approach using uncharacterized measurements to witness quantum discord of an unknown bipartite state within arbitrary dimension system. Furthermore, $2 \times 2$ measurements are sufficient for any bipartite state of arbitrarily large dimension. For any two-qubit state, we show that the maximum of witness happens when one performs mutually orthogonal basis measurement on each qubit. Our method exhibits high robustness against device imperfections, such as error tolerance, indicating its experimental feasibility.

DOI
10.1103/hht6-mvyz

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Quantum discord represents a correlation beyond classicality that could be useful for many quantum information tasks, and therefore is viewed as a valuable quantum resource. Theoretically, whether a bipartite quantum state has a non-zero amount of quantum discord or not can be determined once its density matrix is given. Experimentally, however, it is not easy to perform a reliable tomography on the state, especially when considering the imperfection of devices and the high dimensionality of system. Here, inspired by the so-called dimension witness, we propose a new approach using uncharacterized measurements to witness quantum discord of an unknown bipartite state within arbitrary dimension system. Furthermore, 2×22 \times 22×2 measurements are sufficient for any bipartite state of arbitrarily large dimension. For any two-qubit state, we show that the maximum of witness happens when one performs mutually orthogonal basis measurement on each qubit. Our method exhibits high robustness against device imperfections, such as error tolerance, indicating its experimental feasibility.
Quantum discord is a measure of nonclassical correlations in quantum systems. While the bipartite version of quantum discord is experimentally well-studied, the multipartite version has never been convincingly measured. In this study, we experimentally investigate tripartite quantum discord using an NMR quantum information processor. Building on a theoretical framework for conditional projective measurements and quantum conditional mutual information, we quantify the tripartite quantum discord and its contributions in different three-qubit states such as the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) and Werner (W) states as well as classical mixtures of biseparable Bell states, and classical mixtures of product states. The experiments employed full quantum state tomography and temporal averaging to prepare mixed states, achieving fidelities exceeding 95%. Our results confirm that quantum discord persists even in the absence of entanglement, highlighting its utility as a broader indicator of quantum correlations. Furthermore, we validate the nonconvexity of discord, confirming that classical mixtures of zero-discord states can exhibit nonzero discord. This experimentally confirms that quantum discord does not fit into the framework of resource theory. This work establishes a robust methodology for measuring quantum discord, illuminating the structure and distribution of quantum correlations in multipartite systems.
Like entanglement, quantum discord quantifies the quantum correlations. Unlike entanglement, whose detection is extremely difficult, the quantum discord of an arbitrary bipartite state allows itself to be detected perfectly by a single observable, the quantum discord witness. In particular, we report a single observable whose expectation value provides a necessary and sufficient condition for the vanishing quantum discord of an arbitrary bipartite unknown state with four copies. A quantum circuit is designed to measure the quantum discord witness by using only local qubit-measurements.
Abstract The study of quantum information processing seeks to characterize the resources that enable quantum information processing to perform tasks that are unfeasible or inefficient for classical information processing. Quantum cryptography is one such task, and researchers have identified entanglement as a sufficient resource for secure key generation. However, quantum discord, another type of quantum correlation beyond entanglement, has been found to be necessary for guaranteeing secure communication. Despite this, it remains a long-standing problem to clearly understand the role that discord plays and how to effectively utilize discord for analyzing security in specific quantum cryptography protocols. Here, we strictly prove that discord determines the secrecy and show its practical interest by considering a three-state quantum key distribution protocol. Its robustness against imperfections in qubit sources and measurements as well as basis misalignment, results in better key rates than BB84 protocol. Those advantages are experimentally demonstrated via photonic phase encoding systems.
We propose a single observable to witness the nonzero quantum discord of an unknown quantum state provided that we have four copies of the state. The expectation value of this observable provides a necessary and sufficient condition for the nonzero quantum discord in $2\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}N$ systems and a necessary condition in higher finite-dimensional bipartite systems. Furthermore, a nontrivial lower bound of the quantum discord can be obtained from this expectation value. The proposed observable can be experimentally measured in exactly the same way as the entanglement witness. Moreover, a quantum circuit is designed to determine the expectation value of our observable with four simultaneous local qubit measurements.
Quantum discord, a kind of quantum correlation, is defined as the difference between quantum mutual information and classical correlation in a bipartite system. It has been discussed so far for small systems with only a few independent parameters. We extend here to a much broader class of states when the second party is of arbitrary dimension d, so long as the first, measured, party is a qubit. We present two formulae to calculate quantum discord, the first relating to the original entropic definition and the second to a recently proposed geometric distance measure which leads to an analytical formulation. The tracing over the qubit in the entropic calculation is reduced to a very simple prescription. And, when the d-dimensional system is a so-called X state, the density matrix having non-zero elements only along the diagonal and anti-diagonal so as to appear visually like the letter X, the entropic calculation can be carried out analytically. Such states of the full bipartite qubit-qudit system may be named "extended X states", whose density matrix is built of four block matrices, each visually appearing as an X. The optimization involved in the entropic calculation is generally over two parameters, reducing to one for many cases, and avoided altogether for an overwhelmingly large set of density matrices as our numerical investigations demonstrate. Our results also apply to states of a N-qubit system, where "extended X states" consist of (2^(N+2) - 1) states, larger in number than the (2^(N+1) - 1) of X states of N qubits. While these are still smaller than the total number (2^(2N) - 1) of states of N qubits, the number of parameters involved is nevertheless large. In the case of N = 2, they encompass the entire 15-dimensional parameter space, that is, the extended X states for N = 2 represent the full qubit-qubit system.
Quantum correlations in composite and separable quantum systems are characterized by non-vanishing quantum discord. We demonstrate the necessary and sufficient conditions for existence of hermitian witness operators for quantum discord, bypassing the problem of non-convexity of the set of all classical states. We propose an example of a linear witness which can detect quantum correlations in large classes of separable bipartite systems. Decomposition of the witness in terms of a small number of locally measurable operators as shown here, paves the way for experimental detection of quantum correlations beyond entanglement.