Detecting quantum non-breaking channels without entanglement

Quantum channels, which break entanglement, incompatibility, or nonlocality, are not useful for entanglement-based, one-sided device-independent, or device-independent quantum information processing, respectively. Here, we show that such breaking channels are related to certain temporal quantum correlations, i.e., temporal separability, channel unsteerability, temporal unsteerability, and macrorealism. More specifically, we first define the steerability-breaking channel, which is conceptually similar to the entanglement and nonlocality-breaking channels and prove that it is identical to the incompatibility-breaking channel. Similar to the hierarchy relations of the temporal and spatial quantum correlations, the hierarchy of non-breaking channels is discussed. We then introduce the concept of the channels which break temporal correlations, explain how they are related to the standard breaking channels, and prove the following results: (1) A certain measure of temporal nonseparability can be used to quantify a non-entanglement-breaking channel in the sense that the measure is a memory monotone under the framework of the resource theory of the quantum memory. (2) A non-steerability-breaking channel can be certified with channel steering because the steerability-breaking channel is equivalent to the incompatibility-breaking channel. (3) The temporal steerability and non-macrorealism can, respectively, distinguish the steerability-breaking and the nonlocality-breaking unital channel from their corresponding non-breaking channels. Finally, a two-dimensional depolarizing channel is experimentally implemented as a proof-of-principle example to compare the temporal quantum correlations with non-breaking channels.