We build the counterpart of the celebrated Nielsen's theorem for coherence manipulation in this paper. This offers an affirmative answer to the open question: whether, given two states $ρ$ and $σ$, either $ρ$ can be transformed into $σ$ or vice versa under incoherent operations [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{113}, 140401(2014)]. As a consequence, we find that there exist essentially different types of coherence. Moreover, incoherent operations can be enhanced in the presence of certain coherent states. These extra states are coherent catalysts: they allow uncertain incoherent operations to be realized, without being consumed in any way. Our main result also sheds a new light on the construction of coherence measures.
In this paper, we address the issue of enhancing coherence of a state under stochastic strictly incoherent operations. Based on the $l_1$ norm of coherence, we obtain the maximal value of coherence that can be achieved for a state undergoing a stochastic strictly incoherent operation and the maximal probability of obtaining the maximal coherence. Our findings indicate that a pure state can be transformed into a maximally coherent state under a stochastic strictly incoherent operation if and only if all the components of the pure state are nonzero while a mixed state can never be transformed in…
It has been asked by different authors whether the two classes of Schatten-$p$-norm-based functionals $C_p(ρ)=\min_{σ\in\mathcal{I}}||ρ-σ||_p$ and $ \tilde{C}_p(ρ)= \|ρ-Δρ\|_{p}$ with $p\geq 1$ are valid coherence measures under incoherent operations, strictly incoherent operations, and genuinely incoherent operations, respectively, where $\mathcal{I}$ is the set of incoherent states and $Δρ$ is the diagonal part of density operator $ρ$. Of these questions, all we know is that $C_p(ρ)$ is not a valid coherence measure under incoherent operations and strictly incoherent operations, but all othe…
Manipulation and quantification of quantum resources are fundamental problems in quantum physics. In the asymptotic limit, coherence distillation and dilution have been proposed by manipulating infinite identical copies of states. In the non-asymptotic setting, finite data-size effects emerge, and the practically relevant problem of coherence manipulation using finite resources has been left open. This letter establishes the one-shot theory of coherence dilution, which involves converting maximally coherent states into an arbitrary quantum state using maximally incoherent operations, dephasing…
We establish a lower bound on the quantum coherence of an arbitrary quantum state in arbitrary dimension, using a noncommutativity estimator of an arbitrary observable of sub-unit norm, where the estimator is the commutator of the observable and its incoherent or classical part. The relation provides a direct method of obtaining an estimate of the quantum coherence of an arbitrary quantum state, without resorting to quantum state tomography or the existing witness operators.
We investigate the coherence of quantum channels using the Choi-Jamiołkowski isomorphism. The relation between the coherence and the purity of the channel respects a duality relation. It characterizes the allowed values of coherence when the channel has certain purity. This duality has been depicted via the Coherence-Purity (Co-Pu) diagrams. In particular, we study the quantum coherence of the unital and non-unital qubit channels and find out the allowed region of coherence for a fixed purity. We also study coherence of different incoherent channels, namely, incoherent operation (IO), strictly…
We introduce a method of characterization of non-Markovianity using coherence of a system interacting with the environment. We show that under the allowed incoherent operations, monotonicity of a valid coherence measure is affected due to non-Markovian features of the system-environment evolution. We also define a measure to quantify non-Markovianity of the underlying dynamics based on the non-monotonic behavior of the coherence measure. We investigate our proposed non-Markovianity marker in the behavior of dephasing and dissipative dynamics for one and two qubit cases. We also show that our p…
Following the method of Victor V. Kozlov et al.[PhysRevA. 74. 063829],we inspect the coherence induced by incoherent pump and spontaneous decay process in $Λ$ type three-level atomic system with degenerated lower duplicate levels. The system shows a coherent population trapping state and multi-steady states characteristic in different conditions. Interestingly, two kinds of steady states generated by the system in different sets of pumping and decaying parameters, the "singlet" state and the "triplet" state, exhibit stable or unstable characteristics under the action of pumping field and vacuu…
Considerable work has recently been directed toward developing resource theories of quantum coherence. In most approaches, a state is said to possess quantum coherence if it is not diagonal in some specified basis. In this letter we establish a criterion of physical consistency for any resource theory in terms of physical implementation of the free operations, and we show that all currently proposed basis-dependent theories of coherence fail to satisfy this criterion. We further characterize the physically consistent resource theory of coherence and find its operational power to be quite limit…
One of the most pertinent problems in the debate on non-trivial quantum effects in biology concerns natural photosynthesis. Since sunlight is composed of thermal photons, it was argued to be unable to induce quantum coherence in matter, and that quantum mechanics is therefore irrelevant for the dynamical processes following photoabsorption. Our present analysis of a toy ``molecular aggregate" -- composed of two dipole-dipole interacting two-level atoms treated as an open quantum system -- however shows that incoherent excitations indeed can trigger coherent dynamics that persist: We demonstrat…
We mainly study the block-coherence measures based on resource theory of block-coherence and the coherence measures based on positive-operator-valued measures (POVM). Several block-coherence measures including a block-coherence measure based on maximum relative entropy, the one-shot block coherence cost under the maximally block-incoherent operations, and a coherence measure based on coherent rank have been introduced and the relationships between these block-coherence measures have been obtained. We also give the definition of the maximally block-coherent state and describe the deterministic …
Quantum states transformation under free operations plays a central role in the resource theory of coherence. In this paper, we investigate the transformation from a mixed coherent state into a pure one by using both incoherent operations and stochastic incoherent operations. We show that contrary to the strictly incoherent operations and the stochastic strictly incoherent operations, both the incoherent operations and the stochastic incoherent operations can increase the dimension of the maximal pure coherent subspace of a state. This means that the incoherent operations are generally stronge…
We examine the excitation transport across quantum networks that are continuously driven by a constant and incoherent light source. In particular we investigate the coherence properties of incoherently driven networks by employing recent tools from entanglement theory that enable a rigorous interpretation of coherence in the site basis. With these tools at hand we identify coherent delocalization of excitations over several sites to be a crucial prerequisite for highly efficient transport across networks driven by an incoherent source. These results are set into context with the latest discuss…
Quantum coherence, like entanglement, is a fundamental resource in quantum information. In recent years, remarkable progress has been made in formulating resource theory of coherence from a broader perspective. The notions of block-coherence and POVM-based coherence have been established. Certain challenges, however, remain to be addressed. It is difficult to define incoherent operations directly, without requiring incoherent states, which proves a major obstacle in establishing the resource theory of dynamical coherence. In this paper, we overcome this limitation by introducing an alternate d…
Coherence is a basic notion for quantum states. Instead of quantum states, in this work, We establish a resource theory for quantifying the coherence of Gaussian channels. To do this, we propose the definitions of incoherent Gaussian channels and incoherent Gaussian superchannels.
We characterize the distillation of quantum coherence in the one-shot setting, that is, the conversion of general quantum states into maximally coherent states under different classes of quantum operations. We show that the maximally incoherent operations (MIO) and the dephasing-covariant incoherent operations (DIO) have the same power in the task of one-shot coherence distillation. We establish that the one-shot distillable coherence under MIO and DIO is efficiently computable with a semidefinite program, which we show to correspond to a quantum hypothesis testing problem. Further, we introdu…
Quantum coherence is an essential feature of quantum mechanics which is responsible for the departure between classical and quantum world. The recently established resource theory of quantum coherence studies possible quantum technological applications of quantum coherence, and limitations which arise if one is lacking the ability to establish superpositions. An important open problem in this context is a simple characterization for incoherent operations, constituted by all possible transformations allowed within the resource theory of coherence. In this work, we contribute to such a character…
Recently, trace distance measure of coherence has been proposed for characterizing the coherence of a given quantum state. However, it seems difficult to estimate the optimal incoherent state for high dimensional states. An explicit expression for the trace distance measure of coherence for a class of qudit states is provided. We show that the closest incoherent state to the class of qudit states is just the diagonal matrix obtained from it by deleting all off-diagonal elements. It is also shown that the measure of coherence induced by trace distance can act as a measure of coherence for this …
Theoretical and experimental studies have suggested the relevance of quantum coherence to the performance of photovoltaic and light-harvesting complex molecular systems. However, there are ambiguities regarding the validity of statements we can make about the coherence in such systems. Here we analyze the general procedure for coherence detection in quantum systems and show the counterintuitive phenomenon of detecting a quantum system's initial coherence when both the input and output probe states are completely incoherent. Our analysis yields the necessary and sufficient conditions for valid …
We investigate the coherence of quantum channels and establish a resource theory for quantifying the coherence of quantum channels via Choi matrix. To this aim, we define the incoherent channels and incoherent superchannels. This theory recovers the case of quantum states when we view quantum states as a special case of quantum channels and also, this theory allows some analytical expressions for coherence measures.
High-order coherence effects between two first-order incoherent sources with fully independent phases have been well studied in the literature, which shows interference fringes with respect to the position separations among different space points. Here we show that this is not the whole story, and find that the high-order coherence effects depend on the mode of the phase random walk of the first-order incoherent sources, which can be controlled artificially and represented geometrically by vectorial polygons. Interestingly, by scanning the detectors along the same direction with the position s…
In this paper, we analyze the evolution of quantum coherence in a two-qubit system going through the amplitude damping channel. After they have gone through this channel many times, we analyze the systems with respect to the coherence of their output states. When only one subsystem goes through the channel, frozen coherence occurs if and only if this subsystem is incoherent and an auxiliary condition is satisfied for the other subsystem. When two subsystems go through this quantum channel, quantum coherence can be frozen if and only if the two subsystems are both incoherent. We also investigat…
In the task of assisted coherence distillation via the set of operations X, where X is either local incoherent operations and classical communication (LICC), local quantum-incoherent operations and classical communication (LQICC), separable incoherent operations (SI), or separable quantum incoherent operations (SQI), two parties, namely Alice and Bob, share many copies of a bipartite joint state. The aim of the process is to generate the maximal possible coherence on the subsystem of Bob. In this paper, we investigate the assisted coherence distillation of some special mixed states, the states…
A pair of quantum observables diagonal in the same "incoherent" basis can be measured jointly, so some coherence is obviously required for measurement incompatibility. Here we first observe that coherence in a single observable is linked to the diagonal elements of any observable jointly measurable with it, leading to a general criterion for the coherence needed for incompatibility. Specialising to the case where the second observable is incoherent (diagonal), we develop a concrete method for solving incompatibility problems, tractable even in large systems by analytical bounds, without resort…
We establish a general operational one-to-one mapping between coherence measures and entanglement measures: Any entanglement measure of bipartite pure states is the minimum of a suitable coherence measure over product bases. Any coherence measure of pure states, with extension to mixed states by convex roof, is the maximum entanglement generated by incoherent operations acting on the system and an incoherent ancilla. Remarkably, the generalized CNOT gate is the universal optimal incoherent operation. In this way, all convex-roof coherence measures, including the coherence of formation, are end…
A major signature of quantum mechanics beyond classical physics is coherence, the existence of superposition states. The recently developed resource theory of quantum coherence allows the formalisation of incoherent operations -- those operations which cannot create coherence. We identify the set of operations which additionally do not use coherence. These are such that coherence cannot be exploited by a classical observer, who measures incoherent properties of the system, to go beyond classical dynamics. We give a physical interpretation in terms of interferometry and prove a dilation theorem…
The coherence-breaking channels play a significant role in quantum information theory. We study the coherence-breaking channels and give a method to amend the coherence-breaking channels by applying unitary operations. For given incoherent channel $Φ$, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for the channel to be a coherence-breaking channel and amend it via unitary operations. For qubit incoherent channels $Φ$ that are not coherence-breaking ones, we consider the mapping $Φ\circΦ$ and present the conditions for coherence-breaking and channel amendment as well.
We investigate the single qubit transformations under several typical coherence-free operations, such as, incoherent operation (IO), strictly incoherent operation (SIO), physically incoherent operation (PIO), and coherence preserving operation (CPO). Quantitative connection has been built between IO and SIO in single qubit systems. Moreover, these coherence-free operations have a clear hierarchical relationship in single qubit systems: CPO $\subset$ PIO $\subset$ SIO=IO. A new and explicit proof for the necessary and sufficient condition of single qubit transformation via IO or SIO has been pr…
The coherence resource theory needs to study the operational value and efficiency which can be broadly formulated as the question: when can one coherent state be converted into another under incoherent operations. We answer this question completely for one-mode continuous-variable systems by characterizing conversion of coherent Gaussian states under incoherent Gaussian operations in terms of their first and second moments. The no-go theorem of purification of coherent Gaussian states is also built. The structure of incoherent Gaussian operations of two-mode continuous-variable systems is disc…
We establish a set of resource conversion relationships between quantum coherence and multipartite entanglement in many-body systems, where the operational measures of resource cost and distillation are focused. Under the multipartite incoherent operation, the initial coherence of single-party system bounds the maximal amounts of corresponding operational entanglement in an arbitrary bipartite partition as well as the genuine multipartite entanglement in many-body systems. Furthermore, the converted multipartite entanglement can be transferred to its subsystems and restored to coherence of a s…
Two different Master Equation approaches have been formally derived to address the dynamics of open quantum systems interacting with a thermal environment (such as sunlight). They have led to two different physical results: non-secular equations that show noise-induced (Fano) coherences and secular equations that do not. An experimental test for the appearance of non-secular terms is proposed using Ca atoms in magnetic fields excited by broadband incoherent radiation. Significantly different patterns of fluorescence are predicted, allowing for a clear test for the validity of the secular and n…
We present a theoretical study of noise-induced quantum coherences in a model three-level V-type system interacting with incoherent radiation, an important prototype for a wide range of physical systems ranging from trapped ions to biomolecules and quantum dots. By solving the quantum optical equations of motion for the V-type system, we obtain analytical expressions for the noise-induced coherences and show that they exhibit an oscillating behavior in the limit of large excited level spacing $Δ$ ($Δ/γ\gg 1$, where $γ$ is the radiative decay rate). Most remarkably, we find that in the opposite…
Coherence distillation is one of the central problems in the resource theory of coherence. In this Letter, we complete the deterministic distillation of quantum coherence for a finite number of coherent states under strictly incoherent operations. Specifically, we find the necessary and sufficient condition for the transformation from a mixed coherent state into a pure state via strictly incoherent operations, which recovers a connection between the resource theory of coherence and the algebraic theory of majorization lattice. With the help of this condition, we present the deterministic coher…
Quantum coherence and quantum entanglement represent two fundamental features of non-classical systems that can each be characterized within an operational resource theory. In this paper, we unify the resource theories of entanglement and coherence by studying their combined behavior in the operational setting of local incoherent operations and classical communication (LIOCC). Specifically we analyze the coherence and entanglement trade-offs in the tasks of state formation and resource distillation. For pure states we identify the minimum coherence-entanglement resources needed to generate a g…
Recently, there has been a renewed interest in the quantification of coherence or other coherence-like concepts within the framework of quantum resource theory. However, rigorously defined or not, the notion of coherence or decoherence has already been used by the community for decades since the advent of quantum theory. Intuitively, the definitions of coherence and decoherence should be the two sides of the same coin. Therefore, a natural question is raised: how can the conventional decoherence processes, such as the von Neumann-Lüders (projective) measurement postulation or partially dephasi…
Resource theory of quantum coherence originated like entanglement in quantum information theory. However, still now proper classification of quantum states is missing under coherence. In this work, we have provided a classification of states under local incoherent operations. We have succeeded in deriving the necessary and sufficient condition for which two pure multipartite states are equivalent under stochastic local incoherent operations and classical communications (SLICC) and local incoherent operations and classical communications (LICC). In particular, we have succeeded in characterizin…
Quantum coherence has received significant attention in recent years, but its study is mostly conducted in single party settings. In this paper, we generalize important results in multipartite entanglement theory to their counterparts in quantum coherence theory. First, we give a necessary and sufficient condition for when two pure multipartite states are equivalent under local quantum incoherent operations and classical communication (LICC), i.e., two states can be deterministically transformed to each other under LICC operations. Next, we investigate and give the conditions in which such a t…
We compute analytically the maximal rates of distillation of quantum coherence under strictly incoherent operations (SIO) and physically incoherent operations (PIO), showing that they coincide for all states, and providing a complete description of the phenomenon of bound coherence. In particular, we establish a simple, analytically computable necessary and sufficient criterion for the asymptotic distillability under SIO and PIO. We use this result to show that almost every quantum state is undistillable --- only pure states as well as states whose density matrix contains a rank-one submatrix …
The ability to distill quantum coherence is pivotal for optimizing the performance of quantum technologies; however, such a task cannot always be accomplished with certainty. Here we develop a general framework of probabilistic distillation of quantum coherence in a one-shot setting, establishing fundamental limitations for different classes of free operations. We first provide a geometric interpretation for the maximal success probability, showing that under maximally incoherent operations (MIO) and dephasing-covariant incoherent operations (DIO) the problem can be simplified into efficiently…
Coherence distillation is a basic information-theoretic task in the resource theory of coherence. In this paper, we present the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a mixed state can be distilled into a pure coherent state via stochastic incoherent operations (sIOs). With the help of this result, we further show the following: (i) Any $2$-dimensional coherent state is distillable via sIOs if and only if it is a pure coherent state; (ii) a state $ρ$ is n-distillable via sIOs if and only if it is 1-distillable; and (iii) the set of distillable states via stochastic maximally incoheren…
The loss of coherence of a quantum system coupled to a heat bath as expressed by the reduced density matrix is shown to lead to the miss-characterization of some systems as being incoherent when they are not. The spin boson problem and the harmonic oscillator with massive scalar field heat baths are given as examples of reduced incoherent density matrices which nevertheless still represent perfectly coherent systems.
We found that the Wigner-Yanase skew information, which has been recently proposed as a measure of coherence in [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{113}, 170401(2014)], can increase under a class of operations which may be interpreted as incoherent following the framework of Baumgratz et al., while being phase sensitive.
By using relative entropy of coherence, we characterize the coherence gain induced by some quantum evolutions, including the cohering power of unitary operations and the decohering power of quantum operations. We find that the cohering power of the controlled unitary operation can be reduced to the cohering power of the corresponding unitary operation. We observe that the global coherence generated via incoherent operation applied to the system and an incoherent ancilla do not exceed the amount of coherence contained in the initial system. Our result provides a much tighter lower bound of cohe…
Quantum cascaded systems offer the possibility to manipulate a target system with the quantum state of a source system. Here, we study in detail the differences between a direct quantum cascade and coherent/incoherent driving for the case of two coupled cavity-QED systems. We discuss qualitative differences between these excitations scenarios, which are particular strong for higher-order photon-photon correlations: $g^{(n)}(0)$ with $ n>2 $. Quantum cascaded systems show a behavior differing from the idealized cases of individual coherent/incoherent driving and allow to produce qualitatively d…
The distribution of quantum coherence in multipartite systems is one of the basic problems in the resource theory of coherence. While the usual coherence measures are defined on a single system and cannot capture the nonlocal correlation between subsystems, in order to deal with the distribution of coherence it is crucial to quantify the coherence in bipartite systems properly. Here, we introduce incoherent-quantum (IQ) coherence measures on bipartite systems, which can characterize the correlations between systems. According to the IQ coherence measures on bipartite systems, we find the distr…
The non-increasing behavior of quantum coherence during any incoherent quantum process such as an incoherent quantum channel occurring in a noisy environment is a general property of quantum coherence. We address that the concatenation of the quantum Yang-Baxter matrix, which models a unitary quantum channel, can mitigate these losses by offering relative improvements in the coherence for different initial states prepared by two different strategies. By appropriate choice of the parameters, even after the action of the channel the coherence is maximized such that the reduced state of the outpu…
Given an orthonormal basis in a $d$-dimensional Hilbert space and a unital quantum operation $\cal E$ acting on it one can define a non-linear mapping that associates to $\cal E$ a $d\times d$ real-valued matrix that we call the Coherence Matrix of $\cal E$ with respect to $B$. We show that one can use this coherence matrix to define vast families of measures of the coherence generating power (CGP) of the operation. These measures have a natural geometrical interpretation as separation of $\cal E$ from the set of incoherent unital operations. The probabilistic approach to CGP discussed in P. Z…
