Complete complementarity relations: Connections with EPR realism and decoherence and extension to mixed quantum states

Abstract

Wave-particle duality is an essential character of quantum systems. In the last few years, much progress has being made towards formally quantifying these quantum features. The properties of the quantum density matrix were shown to lead to duality inequalities for single-quanton mixed states and to triality identities, also known as complete complementarity relations (CCRs), for two-quanton pure states. In this article, we establish connections between CCRs and EPR (ir)realism, as formalized by Bilobran and Angelo in [Europhys. Lett. 112, 40005 (2015)]. Besides, we show that, for tripartite pure states $|\psi_{ABE}\rangle$, CCRs can be applied to obtain the system-environment entanglement of formation, $E_{f}(\rho_{AE})$, through the local information of a system $A$ and its classical correlation with an auxiliary system $B$. Moreover, we discuss CCRs in the context of the emergence of the pointer basis in the decoherence process identified via the constancy of system-apparatus classical correlations. We also obtain CCRs for purified mixed bipartite quantum-classical states. In addition, we derive CCR for mixed-bipartite two-qudit quantum states and discuss its interpretations.