Quantifying Quantumness

We introduce and study a measure of ``quantumness'' of a quantum state based on its Hilbert-Schmidt distance from the set of classical states. ``Classical states'' were defined earlier as states for which a positive P-function exists, i.e.~they are mixtures of coherent states [1]. We study invariance properties of the measure, upper bounds, and its relation to entanglement measures. We evaluate the quantumness of a number of physically interesting states and show that for any physical system in thermal equilibrium there is a finite critical temperature above which quantumness vanishes. We then use the measure for identifying the ``most quantum'' states. Such states are expected to be potentially most useful for quantum information theoretical applications. We find these states explicitly for low-dimensional spin-systems, and show that they possess beautiful, highly symmetric Majorana representations. \\[4pt] [1] Classicality of spin states, Olivier Giraud, Petr Braun, and Daniel Braun, Phys. Rev. A 78, 042112 (2008)