Quantum correlation swapping between qutrit states

In this study, the qubit quantum correlation swapping (QCS) is generalized to the qutrit case. To be concrete, two qutrit Werner states are taken as the research objects and the complete set of qutrit Bell states are utilized as the intermediate two-qutrit measure to implement QCS. The popular quantum correlation measure, i.e. quantum discord (Ollivier and Zurek 2001 Phys. Rev. Lett. 88 017901), is employed to characterize and quantify quantum correlations in the concerned states. The properties of the variance and threshold of quantum correlations occurring in the swapping process are revealed, and two distinct QCS phenomena are thus observed. Moreover, it is found that the maximal amount of quantum correlations in the final state can not exceed the minimal one of these in the initial states.