The correlations between physical systems provide significant information about their collective behaviour – information that is used as a resource in many applications, e.g. communication protocols. However, when it comes to the exploitation of such correlations in the quantum world, identification of the associated ‘resource’ is extremely challenging and a matter of debate in the quantum community. This dissertation describes three key results on the identification, detection, and quantification of quantum correlations. It starts with an extensive and accessible introduction to the mathematical and physical grounds for the various definitions of quantum correlations. It subsequently focusses on introducing a novel unified picture of quantum correlations by taking a modern resource-theoretic position. The results show that this novel concept plays a crucial role in the performance of collaborative quantum computations that is not captured by the standard textbook approaches. Further, this new perspective provides a deeper understanding of the quantum-classical boundary and paves the way towards establishing a resource theory of quantum computations.

This book presents a distinctive way of understanding quantum correlations beyond entanglement, introducing readers to this less explored yet very fundamental aspect of quantum theory. It takes into account most of the new ideas involving quantum phenomena, resources, and applications without entanglement, both from a theoretical and an experimental point of view. This book serves as a reference for both beginner students and experienced researchers in physics and applied mathematics, with an interest in joining this novel venture towards understanding the quantum nature of the world.

Quantum correlations are not restricted to the well known entanglement investigated in Bell-type experiments. Other forms of correlations, for example quantum discord, have recently been shown to play an important role in several aspects of quantum information theory. First experiments also support these findings. This book is an introduction into this up-and-coming research field and its likely impact on quantum technology. After giving a general introduction to the concept of quantum correlations and their role in quantum information theory, the author describes a number of pertinent results and their implications.

In this thesis, the main approach to the characterization of the set of classical probabilities, the correlation polytope approach, is reviewed for different scenarios, namely, hidden variable models discussed by Bell (local), Kochen and Specker (non-contextual), and Leggett and Garg (macrorealist). Computational difficulties associated with the method are described and a method to overcome them in several nontrivial cases is presented. For the quantum case, a general method to analyze quantum correlations in the sequential measurement scenario is provided, which allows computation of the maximal correlations. Such a method has a direct application for computation of maximal quantum violations of Leggett-Garg inequalities and it is relevant in the analysis of non-contextuality tests. Finally, possible applications of the results for quantum information tasks are discussed.

This thesis focuses on the study and characterization of entanglement and nonlocal correlations constrained under symmetries. It includes original results as well as detailed methods and explanations for a number of different threads of research: positive partial transpose (PPT) entanglement in the symmetric states; a novel, experimentally friendly method to detect nonlocal correlations in many-body systems; the non-equivalence between entanglement and nonlocality; and elemental monogamies of correlations. Entanglement and nonlocal correlations constitute two fundamental resources for quantum information processing, as they allow novel tasks that are otherwise impossible in a classical scenario. However, their elusive characterization is still a central problem in quantum information theory. The main reason why such a fundamental issue remains a formidable challenge lies in the exponential growth in complexity of the Hilbert space as well as the space of multipartite correlations. Physical systems of interest, on the other hand, display symmetries that can be exploited to reduce this complexity, opening the possibility that some of these questions become tractable for such systems.

An understanding of the effects of electronic correlations in quantum systems is one of the most challenging problems in physics, partly due to the relevance in modern high technology. Yet there exist hardly any books on the subject which try to give a comprehensive overview on the field covering insulators, semiconductors, as well as metals. The present book tries to fill that gap.It intends to provide graduate students and researchers a comprehensive survey of electron correlations, weak and strong, in insulators, semiconductors and metals. This topic is a central one in condensed matter and beyond that in theoretical physics. The reader will have a better understanding of the great progress which has been made in the field over the past few decades.

This monograph identifies the essential characteristics of the objects described by current quantum theory and considers their relationship to space-time. In the process, it explicates the senses in which quantum objects may be consistently considered to have parts of which they may be composed or into which they may be decomposed. The book also demonstrates the degree to which reduction is possible in quantum mechanics, showing it to be related to the objective indefiniteness of quantum properties and the strong non-local correlations that can occur between the physical quantities of quantum subsystems. Careful attention is paid to the relationships among such property correlations, physical causation, probability, and symmetry in quantum theory. In this way, the text identifies and clarifies the conceptual grounds underlying the unique nature of many quantum phenomena.

The contributions to this volume are based on selected lectures from the first international workshop on decoherence, information, complexity and entropy (DICE). The aim of this volume is to reflect the growing importance ot common concepts behind seemingly different fields such as quantum mechanics, general relativity and statistical physics in a form accessible to nonspecialist researchers. Many presentations include original results which published here for the first time.

Yakir Aharonov is one of the leading figures in the foundations of quantum physics. His contributions range from the celebrated Aharonov-Bohm effect (1959), to the more recent theory of weak measurements (whose experimental confirmations were recently ranked as the two most important results of physics in 2011). This volume will contain 27 original articles, contributed by the most important names in quantum physics, in honor of Aharonov's 80-th birthday. Sections include "Quantum mechanics and reality," with contributions from Nobel Laureates David Gross and Sir Anthony Leggett and Yakir Aharonov, S. Popescu and J. Tollaksen; "Building blocks of Nature" with contributions from Francois Englert (co-proposer of the scalar boson along with Peter Higgs); "Time and Cosmology" with contributions from Leonard Susskind, P.C.W. Davies and James Hartle; "Universe as a Wavefunction," with contributions from Phil Pearle, Sean Carroll and David Albert; "Nonlocality," with contributions from Nicolas Gisin, Daniel Rohrlich, Ray Chiao and Lev Vaidman; and finishing with multiple sections on weak values with contributions from A. Jordan, A. Botero, A.D. Parks, L. Johansen, F. Colombo, I. Sabadini, D.C. Struppa, M.V. Berry, B. Reznik, N. Turok, G.A.D. Briggs, Y. Gefen, P. Kwiat, and A. Pines, among others.

Already Einstein could never see quantum mechanics as a complete theory. Nowadays, many researchers, including 't Hooft, view quantum mechanics as a statistical description of some underlying reality. The workshop Beyond the Quantum, organized in Spring 2006 at the Lorentz Center in Leiden, The Netherlands, was one of the first meetings completely devoted to physics that may need an explanation beyond quantum mechanics. A broad variety of subjects was covered. The present book reflects this.