New features of quantum discord uncovered by q-entropies

The notion of quantum discord introduced by Ollivier and Zurek [Phys. Rev. Lett 88 (2001) 017901] (see also Henderson and Vedral [J. Phys. A 34 (2001) 6899] ) has attracted increasing attention, in recent years, as an entropic quantifier of non-classical features pertaining to the correlations exhibited by bipartite quantum systems. Here we generalize the notion so as to encompass power-law q-entropies (that reduce to the standard Shannon entropy in the limit q→1) and study the concomitant consequences. The ensuing, new discord-like measures we advance describe aspects of non-classicality that are different from those associated with the standard quantum discord. A particular manifestation of this difference concerns a feature related to order. Let D1 stand for the standard, Shannon-based discord measure and Dq for the q≠1 one. If two quantum states A,B are such that D1(A)>D1(B), this order-relation does not remain invariant under a change from D1 to Dq.