Correlations in quantum systems exhibit a rich phenomenology under the effect of various sources of noise. We investigate theoretically and experimentally the dynamics of quantum correlations and their classical counterparts in two nuclear magnetic resonance setups, as measured by geometric quantifiers based on trace norm. We consider two-qubit systems prepared in Bell diagonal states, and perform the experiments in real decohering environments resulting from Markovian local noise which preserves the Bell diagonal form of the states. We then report the first observation of environment-induced double sudden transitions in the geometric quantum correlations, a genuinely nonclassical effect not observable in classical correlations. The evolution of classical correlations in our physical implementation reveals in turn the finite-time relaxation to a pointer basis under nondissipative decoherence, which we characterize geometrically in full analogy with predictions based on entropic measures.

• Received 4 October 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.250401