We explore quantum and classical correlations along with coherence in the ground states of spin-1 Heisenberg chains, namely the one-dimensional XXZ model and the one-dimensional bilinear biquadratic model, with the techniques of density matrix renormalization group theory. Exploiting the tools of quantum information theory, that is, by studying quantum discord, quantum mutual information, and three recently introduced coherence measures in the reduced density matrix of two nearest neighbor spins in the bulk, we investigate the quantum phase transitions and special symmetry points in these models. We point out the relative strengths and weaknesses of correlation and coherence measures as figures of merit to witness the quantum phase transitions and symmetry points in the considered spin-1 Heisenberg chains. In particular, we demonstrate that, as none of the studied measures can detect the infinite-order Kosterlitz-Thouless transition in the XXZ model, they appear to be able to signal the existence of the same type of transition in the biliear biquadratic model. However, we argue that what is actually detected by the measures here is the SU(3) symmetry point of the model rather than the infinite-order quantum phase transition. Moreover, we show in the XXZ model that examining even single site coherence can be sufficient to spotlight the second-order phase transition and the SU(2) symmetry point.

We establish relations between geometric quantum discord and entanglement quantifiers obtained by means of optimal witness operators. In particular, we prove a relation between negativity and geometric discord in the Hilbert-Schmidt norm, which has been conjectured before [D. Girolami and G. Adesso, Phys. Rev. A 84, 052110 (2011)]. We also show that, redefining the geometric discord with the trace norm, better bounds can be obtained. We illustrate our results numerically for Werner states and for families of bound entangled states.

We introduce an operational procedure to determine, with arbitrary probability and accuracy, optimal entanglement witnesses for every multipartite entangled state. This method provides an operational criterion for separability which is asymptotically necessary and sufficient. Our results are also generalized to detect all different types of multipartite entanglement.

We investigate the quantum phase transitions of the extended Hubbard model at half-filling with periodic boundary conditions employing the entanglement of particles, as opposed to the more traditional entanglement of modes. Our results show that the entanglement has either discontinuities or local minima at the critical points. We associate the discontinuities to first-order transitions, and the minima to second-order ones. Thus we show that the entanglement of particles can be used to derive the phase diagram, except for the subtle transitions between the spin-density wave (SDW) and bond-order wave (BOW) phases and the triplet superconducting (TS) and singlet superconducting (SS) phases.

An experimental demonstration of two-qutrit state tomography via one-qutrit symmetric informationally complete positive operator-valued measure (SIC-POVM) is presented. A two-qutrit state is encoded in the transversal paths of a spontaneous parametric down-converted photon pair. A spatial light modulator allows us to implement the necessary 81 POVM elements to reconstruct the state. The quality of the reconstruction is evaluated by comparing independent measurements with the predicted results calculated with the reconstructed state. Entanglement in the system is calculated via negativity and generalized robustness from the two-qutrit reconstructed density operator.

We express the optimization of entanglement witnesses for arbitrary bipartite states in terms of a class of convex optimization problems known as robust semidefinite programs (RSDPs). We propose, using well known properties of RSDPs, several sufficient tests for separability of mixed states. Our results are then generalized to multipartite density operators.