The interactions between physical systems generally lead to the formation of correlations. In this paper we consider the phenomena of entanglement and "quantumness of correlations", such as quantum discord, with particular emphasis on their energetic consequences for the participating systems. We describe a number of theoretical models that are commonly employed in this context, highlighting the general character of one of their most intriguing results: In contradiction to conventional expectations, erasure (decay, consumption) of quantum correlations may be a source of work, i.e. may have "negative energetic costs". We report experimental evidence of this surprising effect obtained within the framework of an elementary scattering experiment, namely ultrafast neutron Compton scattering from normal-state liquid 4 He. The general theory of quantumness of correlations provides a natural way of interpreting the reported results, which stand in blatant contrast to the conventional theory of scattering, where neutron-atom-environment quantum correlations and decoherence play no role. Moreover, they provide a new operational meaning of discord and related measures of quantumness.
The interactions between physical systems generally lead to the formation of correlations. In this paper we consider the phenomena of entanglement and "quantumness of correlations", such as quantum discord, with particular emphasis on their energetic consequences for the participating systems. We describe a number of theoretical models that are commonly employed in this context, highlighting the general character of one of their most intriguing results: In contradiction to conventional expectations, erasure (decay, consumption) of quantum correlations may be a source of work, i.e. may have "negative energetic costs". We report experimental evidence of this surprising effect obtained within the framework of an elementary scattering experiment, namely ultrafast neutron Compton scattering from normal-state liquid 4 He. The general theory of quantumness of correlations provides a natural way of interpreting the reported results, which stand in blatant contrast to the conventional theory of scattering, where neutron-atom-environment quantum correlations and decoherence play no role. Moreover, they provide a new operational meaning of discord and related measures of quantumness.
Quantum correlations and associated quantum information concepts (e. g. quantum discord, entanglement, quantum Maxwell’s demon) provide novel insights in various quantum-information processing tasks, quantum-thermodynamics processes, open-system dynamics, quantum molecular dynamics, and general many-body physics. We investigate a new effect of correlations accompanying collision of two quantum systems A and B, the latter being part of a larger (interacting) system B+D. In contrast to the usual case of a classical ‘environment’ or ‘demon’ (which can have only classical correlations with A+B during and after the collision), the quantum case exhibits striking new features. Here, in the frame of incoherent inelastic neutron scattering (INS) and vibrational dynamics of molecules, we report experimental evidence of a new phenomenon: quantum deficit of momentum transfer in an elementary neutron-molecule collision, in particular, in INS from single H2O molecules confined in channels with sub-nanometer diameter. The INS findings are in clear contrast to conventional theoretical expectations, but are naturally (albeit qualitative) interpreted in the frame of modern theory of quantumness of correlations, thus also proposing a new operational meaning of quantum discord and related measures.
Quantum correlations phenomena, such as entanglement, quantum discord and quantum coherence, are ubiquitous effects caused by interactions between physical systems—such as electrons and ions in a piece of metal, or H atoms/molecules adsorbed in nanoporous materials. Here, we address time-asymmetric quantumness of correlations (QoC), with particular emphasis on their energetic consequences for dynamics and non-equilibrium thermodynamics in condensed matter and/or many-body systems. Some known theoretical models—for example, the quantum Zeno effect and GKSL-type Markovian equations-of-motion, all of them being time-asymmetric—are shortly considered, with emphasis on the general character of one of their common and most intriguing result. Namely, that in clear contradistinction to conventional expectations, degradation (or destruction, decoherence, consumption, smearing out, coarse-graining) of quantum correlations can be a source of work (instead of heat production). The experimental relevance of the theoretical considerations is shown with the aid of a recent scattering experiment exploring the impulsively driven (by neutron collisions) translational dynamics of H$ _2 $ molecules in carbon nanotubes and other nanostructured materials—a topic of immediate relevance for material sciences and related technologies.
Several recent experiments on liquid and solid samples containing protons or deuterons show an interesting anomaly, which is a shortfall in the intensity of energetic neutrons scattered by the samples. Previously we demonstrated that quantum correlations in the spatial and spin degrees of freedom of the hydrogen isotopes lead to entanglement in scattering and a reduction in the scattered intensity. The viability of short-lived quantum correlations as the cause of the observed anomalies is further explored and found to be entirely feasible. General features of the basic premiss, that quantum entanglement reduces the scattered signal, are discussed and the interpretation of the neutron scattering experiments is set in context to related work on other systems. For the experiments in question, the duration of a scattering event, τ s , is a fraction of a femtosecond which is extremely short compared to solid-state relaxation times. Increasing τ s , by suitably changing experimental conditions, restores the intensity to the standard value calculated from the single atom cross-section and concentration of particles. Our physical picture of the restoration is evolution with increasing τ s from a pure state of the particles (described by a wavefunction) to a mixed state (described by a density matrix) that is created, through decoherence, by steadily engaging the solid-state environment of the particles.
In general, nuclei and electrons in condensed matter and/or molecules are entangled, due to the prevailing (electromagnetic) interactions. As a matter of fact, the "environment" interacting with a microscopic system of interest (e.g. a proton) causes the destruction of the entanglement. This process, called decoherence, has until now prevented experimenters from directly accessing atomic and/or nuclear entanglement effects in real experiments. However, our neutron and electron Compton scattering experiments from protons (H-atoms) in several condensed systems and molecules at ambient conditions demonstrated a new striking effect, i.e. an "anomalous" decrease of scattering intensity from protons, which seem to become partially "invisible" to the neutrons. This effect, which has no interpretation within conventional neutron scattering theory, is proposed to be caused by the non-unitary time evolution (due to decoherence) during the ultrashort, but finite, time-window of the neutron-proton scattering process. Due to the large energy (several eV) and momentum (20-200 Å −1 ) transfers of these experiments the collisional time between the probe particle and a struck proton is 100–1000 attoseconds long. It is shown that, due to this short timescale, the scattering process must be theoretically treated within quantum dynamics of open quantum systems. New experimental neutron Compton scattering results from a single crystal KHCO 3 are presented. They provide the first direct evidence for a connection between the momentum distribution and the "anomalous" scattering intensity of H. Additionally, recent experiments with electron-atom Compton scattering at momentum transfers are mentioned, which reveal the presence of this effect even in scattering from single H 2 molecules in the gas phase. Theoretical discussions "from first principles" are presented, also in relation to the quantum Zeno effect, which underline the crucial role of decoherence in the considered experiments. The experimental results and their qualitative interpretation show that epithermal neutrons being available at spallation sources (e.g. ISIS/UK, SNS/USA or ESS/Sweden), and electron spectrometers with large scattering angles, provide tools for investigating new physical and chemical phenomena in the sub-femtosecond timescale.
Quantum resource theories allow us to quantify a useful quantum phenomenon, to develop new protocols for its detection and determine the exact processes that maximize its use for practical tasks. These theories aim at transforming physical phenomena, such as entanglement and quantum coherence, into useful properties for the execution of concrete tasks related to quantum information. In this thesis, we focus on the resource theories of entanglement, discord-like quantum correlations, and quantum coherence, the most intriguing quantum phenomena exploited so far in quantum information theory. We begin by presenting in detail the theoretical tools of these quantum resources, focusing on the most remarkable techniques and computational problems. In this sense, we discuss several mathematical methods that solve some problems related to their quantifications, and some analytical results for bipartite quantum systems are given. We also examine the intrinsic connections between these quantum resources by extracting the links that unite the corresponding measures. In contrast, the revolution of quantum technology has led to a growing interest in quantum metrology, and quantum entanglement has been employed to overcome the classical limit in several quantum estimation protocols. In this work, we analyze the role of quantum correlations beyond entanglement in improving the accuracy of an unknown parameter. According to our results, correlations can be captured using quantum Fisher information, and quantum discord correlations can be exploited to ensure the accuracy of phase estimation protocols. This thesis includes also the contributions on the dynamics of these quantum resources in various models of open quantum systems. Among our objectives, is to study the effects of the environment on these quantum resources and to obtain techniques to protect them from the effects of intrinsic decoherence.