Correlations in the Grover search

Abstract

The Grover search is a well-known quantum algorithm that outperforms any classical search algorithm. It is known that quantum correlations such as entanglement are responsible for the power of some quantum information protocols. But entanglement is not the only kind of quantum correlations. Other quantum correlations such as quantum discord are also useful to capture some important properties of the nonclassical correlation. Also there is no well-accepted and clear distinction between quantum correlations and classical correlations. In this paper, we systematically investigate several kinds of correlations including both quantum and classical in the whole process of the Grover search algorithm. These correlations are the concurrence, entanglement of formation, quantum discord, classical correlation and mutual information. The behaviors of quantum discord, classical correlation and mutual information are almost the same while the concurrence is different in the qubit–qubit case. For the qubit partition 1: n case, the behaviors of all correlations are qualitative the same. When the search is over, all kinds of correlations are zero, we argue that this is necessary for the final step in the search.