The distance between a quantum state and its closest state not having a certain property has been used to quantify the amount of correlations corresponding to that property. This approach allows a unified view of the various kinds of correlations present in a quantum system. In particular, using relative entropy as a distance measure, total correlations can be meaningfully separated into a quantum part and a classical part thanks to an additive relation involving only the distances between states. Here we investigate a unified view of correlations using as a distance measure the square norm, which has already been used to define the so-called geometric quantum discord. We thus also consider geometric quantifiers for total and classical correlations, finding, for a quite general class of bipartite states, their explicit expressions. We analyze the relationship among geometric total, quantum, and classical correlations, and we find that they no longer satisfy a closed additivity relation.

• Received 29 December 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.85.032104