The coherent superposition of states, in combination with the quantization of observables, represents one of the most fundamental features that mark the departure of quantum mechanics from the classical realm. Quantum coherence in many-body systems embodies the essence of entanglement and is an essential ingredient for a plethora of physical phenomena in quantum optics, quantum information, solid state physics, and nanoscale thermodynamics. In recent years, research on the presence and functional role of quantum coherence in biological systems has also attracted a considerable interest. Despite the fundamental importance of quantum coherence, the development of a rigorous theory of quantum coherence as a physical resource has only been initiated recently. In this Colloquium we discuss and review the development of this rapidly growing research field that encompasses the characterization, quantification, manipulation, dynamical evolution, and operational application of quantum coherence.
Quantum coherence is a useful resource that is consumed to accomplish several tasks that classical devices are hard to fulfill. Especially, it is considered to be the origin of quantum speedup for many computational algorithms. In this work, we interpret the computational time cost of boson sampling with partially distinguishable photons from the perspective of coherence resource theory. With incoherent operations that preserve the diagonal elements of quantum states up to permutation, which we name \emph{permuted genuinely incoherent operation} (pGIO), we present some evidence that the decrea…
Quantum coherence is an essential feature of quantum mechanics and is an important physical resource in quantum information. Recently, the resource theory of quantum coherence has been established parallel with that of entanglement. In the resource theory, a resource can be well defined if given three ingredients: the free states, the resource, the (restricted) free operations. In this paper, we study the resource theory of coherence in a different light, that is, we consider the total coherence defined by the basis-free coherence maximized among all potential basis. We define the distillable …
We present an optimal probabilistic protocol to distill quantum coherence. Inspired by a specific entanglement distillation protocol, our main result yields a strictly incoherent operation that produces one of a family of maximally coherent states of variable dimension from any pure quantum state. We also expand this protocol to the case where it is possible, for some initial states, to avert any waste of resources as far as the output states are concerned, by exploiting an additional transformation into a suitable intermediate state. These results provide practical schemes for efficient quant…
We demonstrate that quantum Fisher information and superradiance can be formulated as coherence measures in accordance with the resource theory of coherence, thus establishing a direct link between metrological information, superradiance and coherence. We also show that the trivial coherence measure has a metrological interpretation. The arguments are then generalized to show that coherence may be considered as the underlying fundamental resource for any functional of state that is first of all faithful, and second of all concave or linear. Arguments are then presented that show quantum Fisher…
Quantum discord and quantum entanglement are resources in some quantum information processing (QIP) models. However, in recent years, the evidence that separable states or classically correlated states can also accomplish QIP is demonstrated. It provides a useful tool since such states are easier to prepare. Quantum coherence is a measure of non-classical correlation, containing entanglement and discord as a subset. Nowadays, it is of interest whether quantum coherence can act as a resource in QIP independently or not, without the help from quantum discord or entanglement. In this paper, we sh…
The resource theory of quantum coherence studies the off-diagonal elements of a density matrix in a distinguished basis, whereas the resource theory of purity studies all deviations from the maximally mixed state. We establish a direct connection between the two resource theories, by identifying purity as the maximal coherence which is achievable by unitary operations. The states that saturate this maximum identify a universal family of maximally coherent mixed states. These states are optimal resources under maximally incoherent operations, and thus independent of the way coherence is quantif…
Decoherence is all around us. Every quantum system that interacts with the environment is doomed to decohere. The preservation of quantum coherence is one of the major challenges faced in quantum technologies, but its use as a resource is very promising and can lead to various operational advantages, for example in quantum algorithms. Hence, much work has been devoted in recent years to quantify the coherence present in a system. In the present paper, we formulate the quantum resource theory of dynamical coherence. The underlying physical principle we follow is that the free dynamical objects …
Quantum coherence is a fundamental feature of quantum mechanics and an underlying requirement for most quantum information tasks. In the resource theory of coherence, incoherent states are diagonal with respect to a fixed orthonormal basis, i.e., they can be seen as arising from a von Neumann measurement. Here, we introduce and study a generalization to a resource theory of coherence defined with respect to the most general quantum measurement, i.e., to an arbitrary positive-operator-valued measure (POVM). We establish POVM-based coherence measures and POVM-incoherent operations which coincide…
In this paper we study an error correcting protocol that specifically derives its error correcting properties from elementary units of coherence. The entire protocol from beginning to end is performed using non-coherence increasing operations, resulting in the consumption of the input coherence, thus necessitating further quantum resources if one wishes to perform the protocol again. We show that even when the input quantum resource is just 1 coherent qubit, one may acquire partial protection from phase flip errors, and that this can be scaled up to protect against arbitrary qubit errors with …
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…
The search for a simple description of fundamental physical processes is an important part of quantum theory. One example for such an abstraction can be found in the distance lab paradigm: if two separated parties are connected via a classical channel, it is notoriously difficult to characterize all possible operations these parties can perform. This class of operations is widely known as local operations and classical communication (LOCC). Surprisingly, the situation becomes comparably simple if the more general class of separable operations is considered, a finding which has been extensively…
We quantify the dynamical quantum resource in the resource non-increasing (RNI) framework, namely, the free dynamical resource is defined by the channels that cannot increase the static resourcefulness of any input state. We present two kinds of approaches to quantifying the dynamical resource, the distance measures and the maximal increasing static resource (MISR). As a demonstration, we quantify the dynamical total coherence with our presented measures. It is shown that the distance based measures have good operational interpretation through quantum processing tasks and can be numerically ca…
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…
Quantum coherence is one of the most important resources in quantum information. Indeed, preventing the loss of coherence is one of the most important technical challenges obstructing the development of large-scale quantum computers. Recently, there has been substantial progress in developing mathematical resource theories of coherence, paving the way towards its quantification and control. To date however, these resource theories have only been mathematically formalised within the realms of convex-geometry, information theory, and linear algebra. This approach is limited in scope, and makes i…
Quantum noise is ubiquitous to quantum systems as they incessantly interact with their surroundings and results in degrading useful resources such as coherence for single quantum systems and quantum correlations for multipartite systems. Given the importance of these resources in various quantum information processing protocols, it is of utmost importance to characterize how deteriorating is a particular noise scenario (quantum channel) in reference to a certain resource? Here we develop a theory of coherence breaking channels for single quantum systems. Any quantum channel on a single quantum…
We study the modification of the second law of thermodynamics for a quantum system interacting with a reservoir regarding quantum coherence. The whole system is isolated so that neither energy nor information is lost. It is discovered that the coherence of the reservoir can serves as a useful resource allowing the system extract more energy from the reservoir; among the coherence measures, only is the relative entropy of coherence feasible to quantitatively characterize energy exchange. We demonstrate that a thermodynamic cycle between two coherent reservoirs can output more work than its clas…
Imaginarity as a Resource within Quantum Coherence: Geometric Decomposition and Operational Conversion
School of Science, East China University of Technology（华东交通大学理学院）；School of Computer and Computing Science, Hangzhou City University（杭州城市大学计算机与计算科学学院）；School of Mathematical Sciences, Capital Normal University（首都师范大学数学科学学院）
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…
In this paper, we detail an orthogonalization procedure that allows for the quantification of the amount of coherence present an arbitrary superposition of coherent states. The present construction is based on the quantum coherence resource theory introduced by Baumgratz et al., and the coherence resource monotone that we identify is found to characterize the nonclassicality traditionally analyzed via the Glauber-Sudarshan $P$ distribution. This suggests that identical quantum resources underlie both quantum coherence in the discrete finite dimensional case and the nonclassicality of quantum l…
We construct quantum coherence resource theories in symmetrized Fock space (QCRTF), thereby providing an information-theoretic framework that connects analyses of quantum coherence in discrete-variable (DV) and continuous variable (CV) bosonic systems. Unlike traditional quantum coherence resource theories, QCRTF can be made independent of the single-particle basis and allow to quantify coherence within and between particle number sectors. For example, QCRTF can be formulated in such a way that neither Bose-Einstein condensates nor Heisenberg-Weyl coherent states are considered as quantum many…
One of the fundamental features of quantum mechanics is the superposition principle, a manifestation of which is embodied in quantum coherence. Coherence of a quantum state is invariably defined with respect to a preferred set of pointer states, and there exist quantum coherence measures with respect to deterministically as well as probabilistically distinguishable sets of quantum state vectors. Here we study the resource theory of quantum coherence with respect to an arbitrary set of quantum state vectors, that may not even be probabilistically distinguishable. Geometrically, a probabilistica…
We define the quantum-incoherent relative entropy of coherence ($\mathcal{QI}$ REC) of quantum channels in the framework of the resource theory by using the Choi-Jamiolkowsky isomorphism. Coherence-breaking channels are introduced as free operations and their corresponding Choi states as free states. We also show the relationship between the coherence of channel and the quantum discord and find that basis-dependent quantum asymmetric discord can never be more than the $\mathcal{QI}$ REC for any quantum channels. {Also}, we prove the $\mathcal{QI}$ REC is decreasing for any divisible quantum in…
Measuring quantum states provides means to generate genuine random numbers. It has been shown that genuine randomness can be obtained even with an uncharacterized quantum source. In this work, we propose a framework that formalizes the idea of realizing source-independent quantum random number generation via measuring coherence. Without full state tomography, the coherence of the source can be estimated by coherence witnesses. The existing uncertainty-relation-based schemes can be treated as special cases under the coherence framework, as we design a nonlinear coherence witness that can essent…
We characterize minimal measurement setups for validating the quantum coherence of an unknown quantum state. We show that for a $d$-level system, the optimal strategy consists of measuring $d$ orthonormal bases such that each measured basis is mutually unbiased with respect to the reference basis, and together with the reference basis they form an informationally complete set of measurements. We show that, in general, any strategy capable of validating quantum coherence allows one to evaluate also the exact value of coherence. We then give an explicit construction of the optimal measurements f…
Quantum coherence, emerging from the 'superposition' of quantum states, is widely used in various information processing tasks. Recently, the resource theory of multilevel quantum coherence is attracting substantial attention. In this paper, we mainly study the deterministic transformations of resource pure states via free operations in the theoretical framework for multilevel coherence. We prove that any two multilevel coherent resource pure states can be interconverted with a nonzero probability via a completely positive and trace non-increasing $k$-coherence-preserving map. Meanwhile, we pr…
We introduce a new discrete coherence monotone named the \emph{coherence number}, which is a generalization of the coherence rank to mixed states. After defining the coherence number in a similar manner to the Schmidt number in entanglement theory, we present a necessary and sufficient condition of the coherence number for a coherent state to be converted to an entangled state of nonzero $k$-concurrence (a member of the generalized concurrence family with $2\le k \le d$). It also turns out that the coherence number is a useful measure to understand the process of Grover search algorithm of $N$…
Connections between the resource theories of coherence and purity (or non-uniformity) are well known for discrete-variable, finite-dimensional, quantum systems. We establish analogous results for continuous-variable systems, in particular Gaussian systems. To this end, we define the concept of maximal coherence at fixed energy, which is achievable with energy-preserving unitaries. We show that the maximal Gaussian coherence (where states and operations are required to be Gaussian) can be quantified analytically by the relative entropy. We then propose a resource theory of non-uniformity, by co…
We generalize the recently proposed resource theory of coherence (or superposition) [Baumgratz, Cramer & Plenio, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113:140401; Winter & Yang, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116:120404] to the setting where not only the free ("incoherent") resources, but also the objects manipulated are quantum operations, rather than states. In particular, we discuss an information theoretic notion of coherence capacity of a quantum channel, and prove a single-letter formula for it in the case of unitaries. Then we move to the coherence cost of simulating a channel, and prove achievability results for unitari…
Quantum coherence is an essential ingredient in quantum information processing and plays a central role in emergent fields such as nanoscale thermodynamics and quantum biology. However, our understanding and quantitative characterization of coherence as an operational resource are still very limited. Here we show that any degree of coherence with respect to some reference basis can be converted to entanglement via incoherent operations. This finding allows us to define a novel general class of measures of coherence for a quantum system of arbitrary dimension, in terms of the maximum bipartite …
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…
We establish an operational theory of coherence (or of superposition) in quantum systems, by focusing on the optimal rate of performance of certain tasks. Namely, we introduce the two basic concepts - "coherence distillation" and "coherence cost" in the processing quantum states under so-called incoherent operations [Baumgratz/Cramer/Plenio, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113:140401 (2014)]. We then show that in the asymptotic limit of many copies of a state, both are given by simple single-letter formulas: the distillable coherence is given by the relative entropy of coherence (in other words, we give the …
That superpositions of states can be useful for performing tasks in quantum systems has been known since the early days of quantum information, but only recently has quantitative theory of quantum coherence been proposed. Here we apply that theory to an analysis of the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm, which depends on quantum coherence for its operation. The Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm solves a decision problem, and we focus on a probabilistic version of that problem, comparing probability of being correct for both classical and quantum procedures. In addition, we study a related decision problem in which…
As the precious resource for quantum information processing, quantum coherence can be created remotely if the involved two sites are quantum correlated. It can be expected that the amount of coherence created should depend on the quantity of the shared quantum correlation, which is also a resource. Here, we establish an operational connection between coherence induced by steering and the quantum correlation. We find that the steering-induced coherence quantified by such as relative entropy of coherence and trace-norm of coherence is bounded from above by a known quantum correlation measure def…
Quantum coherence is a fundamental manifestation of the quantum superposition principle. Recently, Baumgratz \emph{et al}. [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{113}, 140401 (2014)] presented a rigorous framework to quantify coherence from the view of theory of physical resource. Here we propose a new valid quantum coherence measure which is a convex roof measure, for a quantum system of arbitrary dimension, essentially using the generalized Gell-Mann matrices. Rigorous proof shows that the proposed coherence measure fulfills all the requirements dictated by the resource theory of quantum coherence measur…
One central study that constitutes a major branch of quantum resource theory is the hierarchy of states. This provides a broad understanding of resourcefulness in certain tasks in terms of efficiency. Here, we investigate the maximal superposition states, i.e., golden states, of the resource theory of superposition. Golden states in the resource theory of coherence are very well established; however, it is a very challenging task for superposition due to the nonorthogonality of the basis states. We show that there are sets of inner product settings that admit a golden state in high-dimensional…
Any quantum resource theory is based on free states and free operations, i.e., states and operations which can be created and performed at no cost. In the resource theory of coherence free states are diagonal in some fixed basis, and free operations are those which cannot create coherence for some particular experimental realization. Recently, some problems of this approach have been discussed, and new sets of operations have been proposed to resolve these problems. As an example for such a problem, a quantum operation can be incoherent in one particular experimental realization, but it still …
We derive a monogamy inequality for any local quantum resource and entanglement. It results from the fact that there is always a convex measure for a quantum resource, as shown here, and from the relation between entanglement and local entropy. One of its consequences is an entanglement monogamy different from that usually discussed. If the local resource is nonuniformity or coherence, it is satisfied by familiar resource and entanglement measures. The ensuing upper bound for the local coherence, determined by the entanglement, is independent of the basis used to define the coherence.
Quantum measurement is a class of quantum channels that sends quantum states to classical states. We set up resource theories of quantum coherence and quantum entanglement for quantum measurements and find relations between them. For this, we conceive a relative entropy type quantity to account for the quantum resources of quantum measurements. The quantum coherence of a quantum measurement can be converted into the entanglement in a bipartite quantum measurement through coherence-non generating transformations. Conversely, a quantum entanglement monotone of quantum measurements induces a quan…
We investigate the behavior of coherence in scattering quantum walk search on complete graph under the condition that the total number of vertices of the graph is greatly larger than the marked number of vertices we are searching, $N \gg v$. We find that the consumption of coherence represents the increase of the success probability for the searching,also the consumption of coherence is related to the efficiency of the algorithm represented by oracle queries.If no coherence is consumed, the efficiency of the algorithm will be the same as the classical blind search, implying that coherence is r…
A fundamental task in any physical theory is to quantify certain physical quantity in a meaningful way. In this paper we show that both fidelity distance and affinity distance satisfy the strong contractibility, and the corresponding resource quantifiers can be used to characterize a large class of resource theories. Under two assumptions, namely, convexity of "free states" and closure of free states under "selective free operations", our general framework of resource theory includes quantum resource theories of entanglement, coherence, partial coherence and superposition. In partial coherence…
Shor's factoring algorithm provides a super-polynomial speed-up over all known classical factoring algorithms. Here, we address the question of which quantum properties fuel this advantage. We investigate a sequential variant of Shor's algorithm with a fixed overall structure and identify the role of coherence for this algorithm quantitatively. We analyze this protocol in the framework of dynamical resource theories, which capture the resource character of operations that can create and detect coherence. This allows us to derive a lower and an upper bound on the success probability of the prot…
Any quantum resource theory is based on free states and free operations, i.e., states and operations which can be created and performed at no cost. In the resource theory of coherence free states are diagonal in some fixed basis, and free operations are those which cannot create coherence for some particular experimental realization. Recently, some problems of this approach have been discussed, and new sets of operations have been proposed to resolve these problems. We propose here the framework of genuine quantum coherence. This approach is based on a simple principle: we demand that a genuin…
Nature imposes many restrictions on the operations that we perform. Many of these restrictions can be interpreted in terms of {\it resource} required to realize the operations. Classifying required resource for different types of operations and determining the amount of resource are the crucial subjects in physics. Among many types of operations, a unitary operation is one of the most fundamental operation that has been studied for long time in terms of the resource implicitly and explicitly. Yet, it is a long standing open problem to identify the resource and to clarify the necessary and suff…
We introduce a rigorous framework for the quantification of coherence and identify intuitive and easily computable measures of coherence. We achieve this by adopting the viewpoint of coherence as a physical resource. By determining defining conditions for measures of coherence we identify classes of functionals that satisfy these conditions and other, at first glance natural quantities, that do not qualify as coherence measure. We conclude with an outline of the questions that remain to be answered to complete the theory of coherence as a resource.
We investigate manipulations of pure quantum states under incoherent or strictly incoherent operations assisted by a coherence battery, that is, a storage device whose degree of coherence is allowed to fluctuate in the process. This leads to the derivation of fluctuation relations for quantum coherence, analogous to Jarzynski's and Crooks' relations for work in thermodynamics. Coherence is thus revealed as another instance of a physical resource, in addition to athermality and entanglement, for which a connection is established between the majorisation framework (regulating pure state transfor…
Coherence is a cornerstone of quantum theory and a prerequisite for the advantage of quantum technologies. In recent work, the notion of coherence with respect to a general quantum measurement (POVM) was introduced and embedded into a resource-theoretic framework that generalizes the standard resource theory of coherence. In particular, POVM-incoherent (free) states and operations were established. In this work, we explore features of this framework which arise due to the rich structure of POVMs compared to projective measurements. Moreover, we introduce a rigorous, probabilisitic framework fo…
