Experimentally Witnessing the Quantumness of Correlations
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Experimentally witnessing the quantumness of correlations R. Auccaise,1 J. Maziero,2 L. C. C´eleri,2 D. O. Soares-Pinto,3 E. R. deAzevedo,3 T. J. Bonagamba,3 R. S. Sarthour,4 I. S. Oliveira,4 and R. M. Serra2, ∗ 1Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecu´aria, Rua Jardim Botˆanico 1024, 22460-000 Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 2Centro de Ciˆencias Naturais e Humanas, Universidade Federal do ABC, R. Santa Ad´elia 166, 09210-170 Santo Andr´e, S˜ao Paulo, Brazil 3Instituto de F´ısica de S˜ao Carlos, Universidade de S˜ao Paulo, Caixa Postal 369, 13560-970 S˜ao Carlos, S˜ao Paulo, Brazil 4Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas F´ısicas, Rua Dr. Xavier Sigaud 150, 22290-180 Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil The quantification of quantum correlations (other than entanglement) usually entails laboured numerical optimization procedures also demanding quantum state tomographic methods. Thus it is interesting to have a laboratory friendly witness for the nature of correlations. In this Letter we report a direct experimental implementation of such a witness in a room temperature nuclear magnetic resonance system. In our experiment the nature of correlations is revealed by performing only few local magnetization measurements. We also compare the witness results with those for the symmetric quantum discord and we obtained a fairly good agreement. PACS numbers: 03.67.-a, 03.65.Ta, 03.67.Ac, 03.65.Ud Nonlocality [1] and entanglement [2] of composed sys- tems are distinguishing features of the quantum domain. dimHa dimHb Nevertheless, it is the possibility of locally broadcasting ρcc = pi,j |αiihαi| ⊗ |βj ihβj |, (1) [3] the state of a multiparticle system that broadly de- X X i=1 j=1 fines the nature of its correlations. Remarkably, even separable (nonentangled) states can be quantum corre- where {|αii} and {|βj i} are orthonormal basis for the lated. This kind of quantumness has an important role subsystems state spaces Ha and Hb, respectively, and that is not only related to fundamental physical aspects {pi,j} is a probability distribution. but also concerning applications in quantum information The class of states in equation (1) is contained in the processing [4–7] and communication [3, 8], thermody- set of separable states —those states that can be gen- namics [9], quantum phase transitions[10], and biological erated via local operations coordinated by communicat- systems [11]. ing classical bits—whose more general form is ρsep = a b i piρi ⊗ρi , where {pi} is a probability distribution and Pa b There are several unique aspects of quantum physics ρi (ρi ) is a valid density operator for the subsystem a(b). that discern it from classical theories. One of particular There are separable states that cannot be cast in terms relevance to quantum information science is the impossi- of orthogonal local basis as those given in equation (1) bility of creating a perfect copy of an unknown quantum and, therefore, present non-classical correlations. Un- state [12]. This fact is employed in some quantum crypto- derneath such states lies a non-classicality beyond the graphic protocols [12] and, when extended to multipartite entanglement-separability paradigm, which can be quan- mixed states [3], can be used to classify the aspects of cor- tified by a departure between classical and quantum ver- relations in a composed system as classical or quantum. sions of information theory. One of the most popular Let us consider a bipartite system described by the den- measures for this kind of non-classicality is the quantum sity operator ρ and shared by parts a and b, with respec- discord [13]. This quantifier has been receiving a great tive Hilbert spaces Ha and Hb. The correlations in state deal of attention [6–8, 14]. And it was proposed as a arXiv:1104.1596v2 [quant-ph] 9 Aug 2011 ρ are said to be locally broadcast if there are auxiliary figure of merit for the quantum advantage in some com- systems Ha1 , Ha2 , Hb1 , Hb2 and local operations (com- putational models without or with little entanglement pletely positive, trace-preserving linear maps) Λa : Ha → [4, 5]. Ha1 ⊗Ha2 and Λb : Hb → Hb1 ⊗Hb2 such that ρa1a2b1b2 = In general, measures of non-classical correlations in- Λa ⊗ Λb(ρ) with I(ρa1b1 )= I(ρa2b2 ), where the quantum volve complete knowledge of the system’s state followed mutual information—I(ρxy) = S(ρx)+ S(ρy) − S(ρxy), by extremization procedures. In the laboratory, the x xy S(ρ) = −tr(ρ log2 ρ), and ρ = try(ρ )—quantifies all first task is implemented by quantum state tomographic the correlations between the systems x and y. It turns methods and the second one is carried out by additional out that the correlations in a bipartite system can be lo- numerical manipulations. These procedures are demand- cally broadcast, and therefore have a classical nature, if ing and propagate the unavoidable experimental errors. and only if the system’s state can be written as [3] This observation motivates the search for alternatives 2 also a necessary condition for the absence of quantumness (a) Correlation in the correlations of the composite system (in this case Witness 1 hO4iρ = 0 [15]). We can easily verify that the observ- H (θ ) bd k n k ables in equation (2) can be written in terms of one com- x state ponent of the magnetization in one subsystem as hOiiρ = preparation a Ib † hσ1 ⊗ iξi , with ξi = Ua→b Rni (θi)ρRni (θi) Ua→b, 13 C a b a(b) (θ ) where Rni (θi) = Rni (θi) ⊗ Rni (θi), and Rni (θi) is a k nk local rotation by an angle θi around direction ni, with θ1 = 0, θ2 = θ3 = π/2, n2 = y, and n3 = z. Ua→b is the (b) |11> State Preparation pseudo (θ ) C Read-out controlled-NOT gate with the subsystem a as control. k n k NOT EPR x xy y x x yxy ρ ρ (a) ρQC CC T 1H Acq. x y x y x x y y xyxy n ,θ33 1 1 1 1 3 13 C 4J 4J 2J 2J 2J n ,θ22 Gradient n ,θ11 200 1000 -100 -200 200 1000 -100 -200 200 1000 -100 -200 Hz Hz Hz FIG. 1. (Color online) (a) Schematic representation of the op- (b) eration sequence used to witness the non-classical nature of 3 correlations. (b) Equivalent pulse sequence employed in our experiment. The thicker filled bars represent π/2 pulses, the 2 thinner bars indicate π/4 pulses, and the grey bars indicate Witness π/6 pulses with the phases as shown (negative pulse phases 1 are described by a bar over the symbol). The pulses rep- resented as unfilled dashed bars are modified to achieve the 0 ρ ρ ρ different rotations necessary for the witness protocol. The QC CC T dashed gradient pulse is applied to obtain the classically cor- (c) 1 3 1 related Bell-diagonal state. The time periods 2J , 2J , and 4J 6 represent free evolutions under the J coupling [18]. 4 regarding the classification of correlations in quantum Correlations 2 states. Once the nature of these correlations somehow de- 0 termines what can and cannot be done with a given sys- ρ ρ ρ tem, it is sometimes enough to know whether the correla- QC CC T tions in that system have a classical or a quantum nature. 1 FIG. 2. (Color online) (a) The H spectra (normalized by To accomplish this last task it is convenient to have an the thermal equilibrium state spectrum) obtained after the observable witness for the quantumness of correlations in witness circuit execution (with rotations Rn1 , Rn2 , and Rn3 ), the system. However, as the state space of classical cor- (b) witness expectation value, (c) quantum discord (light blue related systems is not convex, a linear witness cannot be columns) and classical correlation (dark blue columns) mea- used in general, and we have to take advantage of a non- sured in three different initial states, ρQC quantum correlated, linear witness. For a wide class of two-qubit systems, ρ = ρCC classically correlated, and ρT thermal equilibrium state. ab 3 a b a b a b The dashed line represents the experimental error bound for I + (Aiσ ⊗ I + BiI ⊗ σ + Ciσ ⊗ σ ) /4, a Pi=1 i i i i determination of classically correlated (zero discord) states. sufficient condition for classicality of correlations is [15] The witness was measured directly performing the circuit de- picted in Fig 1 (a), while the classical correlation and the 3 4 symmetric quantum discord was computed after full QST and Wρ = |hOiiρhOj iρ| =0, (2) numerical extremization procedures. The correlations are dis- X X 2 i=1 j=i+1 played in units of (ε / ln 2)bit [18]. a b 3 a with Oi = σi ⊗ σi for i =1, 2, 3 and O4 = i=1(ziσi ⊗ a b P We experimentally implemented the aforementioned Ib + w Ia ⊗ σb). The σ ( ) is the ith component of the i i i witness using the room temperature nuclear magnetic Pauli operator in subsystem a(b). A , B ,z , w ∈ ℜ i i i i resonance (NMR) system. In this scenario the qubits with z , w randomly chosen and constrained such that i i (quantum bits) are encoded in nuclear spins and they z2 = w2 = 1. For the so-called Bell-diagonal class Pi i Pi i are manipulated by radio-frequency (rf) pulses. Unitary Iab 3 a b of states, ρbd = + i=1 Ciσi ⊗ σi /4, Wρbd = 0 is operations are achieved by suitable choice of pulse am- P 3 (a) Re(Δρ ) Im(Δρ ) after the aforementioned pulse sequence.