We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for freezing of quantum correlations as measured by quantum discord and quantum work deficit in the case of bipartite as well as multipartite states subjected to local noisy channels. We recognize that inhomogeneity of the magnetizations of the shared quantum states plays an important role in the freezing phenomena. We show that the frozen value of the quantum correlation and the time interval for freezing follow a complementarity relation. For states which do not exhibit “exact” freezing, but can be frozen “effectively,” by having a very slow decay rate with suitable tuning of the state parameters, we introduce an index—the freezing index—to quantify the goodness of freezing. We find that the freezing index can be used to detect quantum phase transitions and discuss the corresponding scaling behavior.

• Received 28 October 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.91.062119