Characterizing Quantumness via Entanglement Creation

In [Piani et al., PRL106 (2011) 220403], an activation protocol was introduced which maps the general non-classical (multipartite) correlations between given systems into bipartite entanglement between the systems and local ancillae by means of a potentially highly entangling interaction. Here, we study how this activation protocol can be used to entangle the starting systems themselves via entanglement swapping through a measurement on the ancillae. Furthermore, we bound the relative entropy of quantumness (a naturally arising measure of non-classicality in the scheme of Piani et al. above) for a special class of separable states, the so-called classical–quantum states. In particular, we fully characterize the classical–quantum two-qubit states that are maximally non-classical.