Experimental detection of nonclassical correlations in mixed-state quantum computation

We report on an experiment to detect nonclassical correlations in a highly mixed state. The correlations are characterized by the quantum discord and are observed using four qubits in a liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance quantum information processor. The state analyzed is the output of a DQC1 computation, whose input is a single quantum bit accompanied by n maximally mixed qubits. This model of computation outperforms the best known classical algorithms and, although it contains vanishing entanglement, it is known to have quantum correlations characterized by the quantum discord. This experiment detects nonvanishing quantum discord, ensuring the existence of nonclassical correlations as measured by the quantum discord.