Direct measure of quantum correlation

Abstract

The quantumness of the correlation known as quantum correlation is usually measured by quantum discord. So far various quantum discords can be roughly understood as indirect measure by some special discrepancy of two quantities. We present a direct measure of quantum correlation by revealing the difference between the structures of classically and quantum correlated states. Our measure explicitly includes the contributions of the inseparability and local nonorthogonality of the eigenvectors of a density matrix. Besides its relatively easy computability, our measure can provide a unified understanding of quantum correlation of all the present versions.