English

Discording power of quantum evolutions

Quantum Physics 2013-01-09 v2

Abstract

We introduce the discording power of a unitary transformation, which assesses its capability to produce quantum discord, and analyze in detail the generation of discord by relevant classes of two-qubit gates. Our measure is based on the Cartan decomposition of two-qubit unitaries and on evaluating the maximum discord achievable by a unitary upon acting on classical-classical states at fixed purity. We found that there exist gates which are perfect discorders for any value of purity, and that they belong to a class of operators that includes the $\sqrt{{SWAP}}. Other gates, even those universal for quantum computation, do not posses the same property: the CNOT, for example, is a perfect discorder only for states with low or unit purity, but not for intermediate values. The discording power of a two-qubit unitary also provides a generalization of the corresponding measure defined for entanglement to any value of the purity.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1208.5605,
  title  = {Discording power of quantum evolutions},
  author = {F. Galve and F. Plastina and M. G. A. Paris and R. Zambrini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1208.5605},
  year   = {2013}
}

Comments

accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

R2 v1 2026-06-21T21:56:13.046Z