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arXiv · 1810.12949

A measure of quantum correlations that lies approximately between entanglement and discord

Aaron Szasz
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Abstract

When a quantum system is divided into two local subsystems, measurements on the two subsystems can exhibit correlations beyond those possible in a classical joint probability distribution; these are partially explained by entanglement, and more generally by a wider class of measures such as the quantum discord. In this work, I introduce a simple thought experiment defining a new measure of quantum correlations, which I call the accord, and write the result as a minimax optimization over unitary matrices. I find the exact result for pure states as a simple function of the Schmidt coefficients and provide a complete proof, and I likewise provide and prove the result for several classes of mixed states, notably including all states of two qubits and the experimentally relevant case of a pure state mixed with colorless noise. I demonstrate that for two qubit states the accord provides a tight lower bound on the discord; for Bell diagonal states it is also an upper bound on entanglement.

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Aaron Szasz. 2019-06-14. A measure of quantum correlations that lies approximately between entanglement and discord. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreva.99.062313

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