We introduce a quantum-optical notion of nonclassicality that we call the process output nonclassicality for multimode quantum channels. The motivation comes from an information-theoretic point of view and the emphasis is on the output states of a channel. We deem a channel to be “classical” if its outputs are always classical irrespective of the input, i.e., if the channel is nonclassicality breaking, and nonclassical otherwise. Our condition is stronger than the one considered by Rahimi-Keshari et al., [Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 160401 (2013)] and we compare the two approaches. Using our framework we then quantify the nonclassicality of a quantum process by introducing a noise-robustness type of measure that we call the nonclassicality depth of a channel. It characterizes a certain threshold noise beyond which a given channel outputs only classical states. We achieve this by generalizing a prescription by Lee [Phys. Rev. A 44, R2775 (1991)] to multimode states and then by extension to multimode channels.

• Received 26 October 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.93.042103