Quantum discord for general two--qubit states: Analytical progress

We present a reliable algorithm to evaluate quantum discord for general two--qubit states, amending and extending an approach recently put forward for the subclass of X--states. A closed expression for the discord of arbitrary states of two qubits cannot be obtained, as the optimization problem for the conditional entropy requires the solution to a pair of transcendental equations in the state parameters. We apply our algorithm to run a numerical comparison between quantum discord and an alternative, computable measure of non-classical correlations, namely the geometric discord. We identify the extremally non-classically correlated two--qubit states according to the (normalized) geometric discord, at fixed value of the conventional quantum discord. The latter cannot exceed the square root of the former for systems of two qubits.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

Local Quantum Uncertainty in Two-Qubit Separable States: A Case Study

Recent findings suggest, separable states, which are otherwise of no use in entanglement dependent tasks, can also be used in information processing tasks that depend upon the discord type general non classical correlations. In this work, we explore the nature of uncertainty in separable states as measured by local quantum uncertainty. Particularly in two-qubit system, we find separable X-state which has maximum local quantum uncertainty. Interestingly, this separable state coincides with the separable state, having maximum geometric discord. We also search for the maximum amount of local quantum uncertainty in separable Bell diagonal states. We indicate an interesting connection to the tightness of entropic uncertainty with the state of maximum uncertainty.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, latex2e, comments welcome, to appear in qi