English

Single- and two-mode quantumness at a beam splitter

Quantum Physics 2015-10-14 v2

Abstract

In the context of bipartite bosonic systems, two notions of classicality of correlations can be defined: P-classicality, based on the properties of the Glauber-Sudarshan P-function; and C-classicality, based on the entropic quantum discord. It has been shown that these two notions are maximally inequivalent in a static (metric) sense -- as they coincide only on a set of states of zero measure. We extend and reinforce quantitatively this inequivalence by addressing the dynamical relation between these types of non-classicality in a paradigmatic quantum-optical setting: the linear mixing at a beam splitter of a single-mode Gaussian state with a thermal reference state. Specifically, we show that almost all P-classical input states generate outputs that are not C-classical. Indeed, for the case of zero thermal reference photons, the more P-classical resources at the input the less C-classicality at the output. In addition, we show that the P-classicality at the input -- as quantified by the non-classical depth -- does instead determine quantitatively the potential of generating output entanglement. This endows the non-classical depth with a new operational interpretation: it gives the maximum number of thermal reference photons that can be mixed at a beam splitter without destroying the output entanglement.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1502.04996,
  title  = {Single- and two-mode quantumness at a beam splitter},
  author = {Matteo Brunelli and Claudia Benedetti and Stefano Olivares and Alessandro Ferraro and Matteo G. A. Paris},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1502.04996},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

13 pages, 10 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T08:31:42.167Z