Quantum discord and multipartite correlations

Recently, it was realized that quantum discord can be seen as the minimal amount of correlations which are lost when some local quantum operations are performed. Based on this formulation of quantum discord, we provide a systematical analysis of quantum and classical correlations present in both bipartite and multipartite quantum systems. As a natural result of this analysis, we introduce a new measure of the overall quantum correlations which is lower bounded by quantum discord.