Quantum coherence stemming from the superposition behaviour of a particle beyond the classical realm, serves as one of the most fundamental features in quantum mechanics. The wave-particle duality phenomenon, which shares the same origin, has a strong relationship with quantum coherence. Recently, an elegant relation between quantum coherence and path information has been theoretically derived. Here, we experimentally test such new duality by l1-norm measure and the minimum-error state discrimination. We prepare three classes of two-photon states encoded in polarisation degree of freedom, with one photon serving as the target and the other photon as the detector. We observe that wave-particle-like complementarity and Bagan's equality, defined by the duality relation between coherence and path information, is well satisfied. Our results may shed new light on the original nature of wave-particle duality and on the applications of quantum coherence as a fundamental resource in quantum technologies.
Coherence measures and their operational interpretations lay the cornerstone of coherence theory. In this paper, we introduce a class of coherence measures with $α$-affinity, say $α$-affinity of coherence for $α\in (0, 1)$. Furthermore, we obtain the analytic formulae for these coherence measures and study their corresponding convex roof extension. We provide an operational interpretation for $1/2$-affinity of coherence by showing that it is equal to the error probability to discrimination a set of pure states with the least square measurement. Employing this relationship we regain the optimal…
We find two relations between coherence and path-information in a multi-path interferometer. The first builds on earlier results for the two-path interferometer, which used minimum-error state discrimination between detector states to provide the path information. For visibility, which was used in the two-path case, we substitute a recently defined $l_{1}$ measure of quantum coherence. The second is an entropic relation in which the path information is characterized by the mutual information between the detector states and the outcome of the measurement performed on them, and the coherence mea…
We derive a generalized wave-particle duality relation for arbitrary multipath quantum interference phenomena. Beyond the conventional notion of the wave nature of a quantum system, i.e., the interference fringe visibility, we introduce a quantifier as the normalized quantum coherence, recently defined in the framework of quantum information theory. To witness the particle nature, we quantify the path distinguishability or the which-path information based on unambiguous quantum state discrimination. Then, the Bohr complementarity principle for multipath quantum interference can be stated as a …
A well known result for the interference of two single-mode fields is that the degree of coherence and the degree of indistinguishablity are same when we consider the detection of a single photon. In this article we present the relation between degree of coherence, path indistinguishability and the fringe visibility considering interference of multiple number of single-mode fields while being interested in the detection of a single photon only . We will also mention how Born's rule of interference for multiple sources is reflected in these results.
The classic example of the destruction of interference fringes in a ``which-way'' experiment, caused by an environmental interaction, may be viewed as the destruction of first-order coherence as defined by Glauber many years ago (Glauber). However, the influence of an environment can also destroy the $n$th-order quantum coherence in a quantum system, where this high order coherence is captured. We refer to this phenomenon as the $n$% th-order decoherence. In this paper we show that, just as the first-order coherence can be understood as the interference of the amplitudes for two distinct paths…
An interference experiment with entangled particles is theoretically analyzed, where one of the entangled pair (particle 1) goes through a multi-slit before being detected at a fixed detector. In addition, one introduces a mechanism for finding out which of the n slits did particle 1 go through. The other particle of the entangled pair (particle 2) goes in a different direction, and is detected at a variable, spatially separated location. In coincident counting, particle 2 shows n-slit interference. It is shown that the normalized quantum coherence of particle 2, $\mathcal{C}_2$, and the path-…
Multiple quantum experiments are used to resolve broad peaks in nuclear magnetic resonance spectra of quadrupolar nuclei. In this work, we study phase cycling of radio frequency pulses in a single quantum satellite transition magic angle spinning experiment. The particular pulse sequence is a shifted echo sequence where phases of the pulses are varied in accordance with coherence selection rules. Experiments were performed on a $^{17}$O enriched sample of SiO$_2$. Results show that certain phase sequences may decrease the full width at half maximum of spectral peaks.
The wave-particle duality demonstrates a competition relation between wave and particle behavior for a particle going through an interferometer. This duality can be formulated as an inequality, which upper bounds the sum of interference visibility and path information. However, if the particle is entangled with a quantum memory, then the bound may decrease. Here, we find the duality relation between coherence and path information for a particle going through a multipath interferometer in the presence of a quantum memory, offering an upper bound on the duality relation which is directly connect…
It is well known that fringe contrast is not a good quantifier of the wave nature of a quanton in multipath interference. A new interference visibility, based on the Hilbert-Schmidt coherence is introduced. It is demonstrated that this visibility is a good quantifier of wave nature, and can be experimentally measured. A generalized path predictability is introduced, which reduces to the predictability of Greenberger and Yasin, for the case of two paths. In a multipath, which-way interference experiment, the new visibility, the predictability and the I-concurrence (quantifying the entanglement …
In this work we derive analytical relations between Entanglement and Coherence as well as between Discord and Coherence, for Bell-diagonal states and for X states, evolving under the action of several noise channels: Bit Flip, Phase Damping and Depolarizing. We demonstrate that for these families, Coherence is the fundamental correlation, that is: Coherence is necessary for the presence of Entanglement and Discord.
In an asymmetric multislit interference experiment, a quanton is more likely to pass through certain slits than some others. In such a situation one may be able to predict which slit a quanton is more likely to go through, even without using any path-detecting device. This allows one to talk of path predictability. It has been shown earlier that for a two-slit interference, the predictability and fringe visibility are constrained by the inequality $P^2+V^2\le 1$. Generalizing this relation to the case of more than two slits is still an unsolved problem. A new definition for predictability for …
Quantum measurements necessarily disturb the state of physical system. Once we perform a complete measurement, the system undergoes decoherence and loses its coherence. If there is no disturbance, the state retains all of its coherence. It is therefore natural to ask if there is trade-off between disturbance caused to a state and its coherence. We present a coherence disturbance complementarity relation using the relative entropy of coherence. For bipartite states we prove a complementarity relation between the quantum coherence, entanglement and disturbance. Similar relation also holds for qu…
The concept of quantum coherence, including various ways to quantify the degree of coherence with respect to the prescribed basis, is currently the subject of active research. The complementarity of quantum coherence in different bases was studied by deriving upper bounds on the sum of the corresponding measures. To obtain a two-sided estimate, lower bounds on the coherence quantifiers are also of interest. Such bounds are naturally referred to as uncertainty relations for quantum coherence. We obtain new uncertainty relations for coherence quantifiers averaged with respect to a set of mutuall…
Measurement outcomes of a quantum state can be genuinely random (unpredictable) according to the basic laws of quantum mechanics. The Heisenberg-Robertson uncertainty relation puts constrains on the accuracy of two noncommuting observables. The existing uncertainty relations adopt variance or entropic measures, which are functions of observed outcome distributions, to quantify the uncertainty. According to recent studies of quantum coherence, such uncertainty measures contain both classical (predictable) and quantum (unpredictable) components. In order to extract out the quantum effects, we de…
Wave-particle duality is a typical example of Bohr's complementarity principle that plays a significant role in quantum mechanics. Previous studies used the visibility of an interference pattern to quantify the wave property and used path information to quantify the particle property. However, coherence is the core and basis of the interference phenomenon. If we could use coherence to characterize the wave property, the understanding of wave-particle duality would be strengthened. A recent theoretical work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 160406 (2016)] found two relations between quantum coherence and …
We establish two complementarity relations for the relative entropy of coherence in quantum information processing, i.e., quantum dense coding and teleportation. We first give an uncertaintylike expression relating local quantum coherence to the capacity of optimal dense coding for bipartite system. The relation can also be applied to the case of dense coding by using unital memoryless noisy quantum channels. Further, the relation between local quantum coherence and teleportation fidelity for two-qubit system is given.
The interference observed for a quanton, traversing more than one path, is believed to characterize its wave nature. Conventionally, the sharpness of interference has been quantified by its visibility or contrast, as defined in optics. Based on this visibility, wave-particle duality relations have been formulated for two-path interference. However, as one generalizes the situation to multi-path interference, it is found that conventional interference visibility is not a good quantifier. A recently introduced measure of quantum coherence has been shown to be a good quantifier of the wave nature…
The concept of quantum coherence and its possible use as a resource are currently the subject of active researches. Uncertainty and complementarity relations for quantum coherence allow one to study its changes with respect to other characteristics of the process of interest. Protocols of quantum information processing often use measurements that have a special inner structure. Quantum designs are considered as tools with a perspective of fruitful applications in quantum information processing. We obtain uncertainty and certainty relations for coherence averaged with respect to a set of design…
Coherence of a quantum state intrinsically depends on the choice of the reference basis. A natural question to ask is the following: if we use two or more incompatible reference bases, can~there be some trade-off relation between the coherence measures in different reference bases? We show that the quantum coherence of a state as quantified by the relative entropy of coherence in two or more noncommuting reference bases respects uncertainty like relations for a given state of single and bipartite quantum systems. In the case of bipartite systems, we find that the presence of entanglement may t…
We study the trade-off relations given by the l_1-norm coherence of general multipartite states. Explicit trade-off inequalities are derived with lower bounds given by the coherence of either bipartite or multipartite reduced density matrices. In particular, for pure three-qubit states, it is explicitly shown that the trade-off inequality is lower bounded by the three tangle of quantum entanglement.
Various measures have been suggested recently for quantifying the coherence of a quantum state with respect to a given basis. We first use two of these, the l_1-norm and relative entropy measures, to investigate tradeoffs between the coherences of mutually unbiased bases. Results include relations between coherence, uncertainty and purity; tight general bounds restricting the coherences of mutually unbiased bases; and an exact complementarity relation for qubit coherences. We further define the average coherence of a quantum state. For the l_1-norm measure this is related to a natural 'coheren…
Quantum coherence is the most fundamental of all quantum quantifiers, underlying other well-known quantities such as entanglement, quantum discord, and Bell correlations. It can be distributed in a multipartite system in various ways -- for example, in a bipartite system it can exist within subsystems (local coherence) or collectively between the subsystems (global coherence) and exhibits a trade-off relation. In quantum systems with more than two subsystems, there are more trade-off relations, due to the various decomposition ways of the coherence. In this paper, we experimentally verify thes…
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…
In thermodynamics, quantum coherences - superpositions between energy eigenstates - behave in distinctly nonclassical ways. Recently mathematical frameworks have emerged to account for these features and have provided a range of novel insights. Here we describe how thermodynamic coherence splits into two kinds - "internal" coherence that admits an energetic value in terms of thermodynamic work, and "external" coherence that does not have energetic value, but instead corresponds to the functioning of the system as a quantum clock. For the latter form of coherence we provide dynamical constraint…
Quantum coherence plays an important role in quantum information protocols that provide an advantage over classical information processing. The amount of coherence that can exist between two orthogonal subspaces is limited by the positivity constraint on the density matrix. On the level of multipartite systems, this gives rise to what is known as monogamy of entanglement. On the level of single systems this leads to a bound, and hence, a trade-off in coherence that can exist between different orthogonal subspaces. In this work we derive trade-off relations for the amount of coherence that can …
The ability that one system immediately affects another one by using local measurements is regarded as quantum steering, which can be detected by various steering criteria. Recently, Mondal et al. [Phys. Rev. A 98, 052330 (2018)] derived the complementarity relations of coherence steering criteria, and revealed that the quantum steering of system can be observed through the average coherence of subsystem. Here, we experimentally verify the complementarity relations between quantum steering criteria by employing two-photon Bell-like states and three Pauli operators. The results demonstrate that…
We report observation of a counter-intuitive phenomenon in multi-path correlation interferometry with thermal light. The intensity correlation between the outputs of two unbalanced Mach-Zehnder interferometers (UMZI) with two classically correlated beams of thermal light at the input exhibits genuine second-order interference with the visibility of $1/3$. Surprisingly, the second-order interference does not degrade at all no matter how much the path length difference in each UMZI is increased beyond the coherence length of the thermal light. Moreover, the second-order interference is dependent…
We theoretically investigate exciton relaxation dynamics in molecular aggregates based on model photosynthetic complexes under various conditions of incoherent excitation. We show that noise-induced quantum coherence is generated between spatially-separated exciton states which belong to the same or different energy transfer pathways, coupled via real and virtual transfer processes. Such quantum coherence effects may be used to improve light-harvesting efficiency and to reveal quantum phenomena in biology.
Quantum coherence and quantum correlations lie in the center of quantum information science, since they both are considered as fundamental reasons for significant features of quantum mechanics different from classical mechanics. We present a group of complementary relations for quantum coherence and quantum correlations; specifically, we focus on thermal discord and conditional information in scenarios of multiple measurements. We show that the summation of quantum coherence quantified in different bases has a lower bound, resulting from entropic uncertainty relations with multiple measurement…
We propose a new family of coherence monotones, named the \emph{generalized coherence concurrence} (or coherence $k$-concurrence), which is an analogous concept to the generalized entanglement concurrence. The coherence $k$-concurrence of a state is nonzero if and only if the coherence number (a recently introduced discrete coherence monotone) of the state is not smaller than $k$, and a state can be converted to a state with nonzero entanglement $k$-concurrence via incoherent operations if and only if the state has nonzero coherence $k$-concurrence. We apply the coherence concurrence family to…
One of the fundamental differences between classical and quantum mechanics is in the ways correlations can be distributed among the many parties that compose a system. While classical correlations can be shared among many subsystems, in general quantum correlations cannot be freely shared. This unique property is known as monogamy of quantum correlations. In this work, we study the monogamy properties of the correlated coherence for the l 1 -norm and relative entropy measures of coherence. For the l 1 -norm the correlated coherence is monogamous for a particular class of quantum states. For th…
Quantum coherence is important in quantum mechanics, and its essence is from superposition principle. We study the coherence of any two pure states and that of their arbitrary superposition, and obtain the relationship between them. In the case that the two states have support on orthogonal subspaces, the relationship is simple, that is, the difference between the coherence of their superposition state and the average coherence of them is smaller than 1. In other cases, we obtain different and a little more complicated relationships. Furthermore, we also obtain the lower bound of coherence of …
Uncertainty relation usually is one of the most important features in quantum mechanics, and is the backbone of quantum theory, which distinguishes from the rule in classical counterpart. Specifically, entropy-based uncertainty relations are of fundamental importance in the region of quantum information theory, offering one nontrivial bound of key rate towards quantum key distribution. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate the entropic uncertainty relations and coherence-based uncertainty relations in an all-optics platform. By means of preparing two kinds of bipartite initial states wit…
Entanglement and coherence are two essential quantum resources for quantum information processing. A natural question arises of whether there are direct link between them. And by thinking about this question, we propose a new measure for quantum state that contains concurrence and is called intrinsic concurrence. Interestingly, we discover that the intrinsic concurrence is always complementary to coherence. Note that the intrinsic concurrence is related to the concurrence of a special pure state ensemble. In order to explain the trade-off relation more intuitively, we apply it in some composit…
The estimation of the decoherence process of an open quantum system is of both theoretical significance and experimental appealing. Practically, the decoherence can be easily estimated if the coherence evolution satisfies some simple relations. Based on the coherence quantification method, we prove a simple factorization relation for the $l_1$ norm measure of coherence, and analyze under which condition this relation holds. We also obtain a more general relation which applies to arbitrary $N$-qubit state, and determine a condition for the transformation matrix of the quantum channel which can …
Recent studies have developed fundamental limitations on nanoscale thermodynamics, in terms of a set of independent free energy relations. Here we show that free energy relations cannot properly describe quantum coherence in thermodynamic processes. By casting time-asymmetry as a quantifiable, fundamental resource of a quantum state we arrive at an additional, independent set of thermodynamic constraints that naturally extend the existing ones. These asymmetry relations reveal that the traditional Szilard engine argument does not extend automatically to quantum coherences, but instead only rel…
The uncertainty principle sets a bound on our ability to predict the measurement outcomes of two incompatible observables which are measured on a quantum particle simultaneously. In quantum information theory, the uncertainty principle can be formulated in terms of the Shannon entropy. Entropic uncertainty bound can be improved by adding a particle which correlates with the measured particle. The added particle acts as a quantum memory. In this work, a method is provided for obtaining the entropic uncertainty relations in the presence of a quantum memory by using quantum coherence. In the meth…
Discussions about quantum interference, indistinguishability and superpostion between quantum states goes back to the beginning of quantum mechanics, but the theoretical problem concerning quantitative measures for quantum coherence was only recently solved by Baumgratz et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 113 140401 (2014)]. Since then many works have explored one of the possible coherence measures, the l1 norm, which has not yet been experimentally obtained for spatial photonic states in high dimensions. In this article we study states prepared with photons crossing multiple slits and implement the theo…
The operational meaning of coherence measure lies at very heart of the coherence theory. In this paper, we provide an operational interpretation for geometric coherence, by proving that the geometric coherence of a quantum state is equal to the minimum error probability to discriminate a set of pure states with von Neumann measurement. On the other hand, we also show that a task to ambiguously discriminate a set of linearly independent pure states can be also regards as a problem of calculating geometric coherence. That is, we reveal an equivalence relation between ambiguous quantum state disc…
Superadditivity relations characterize the distributions of coherence in multipartite quantum systems. In this work, we investigate the superadditivity relations related to the $l_1$-norm of coherence $C_{l_1}$ in multiqubit quantum systems. Tighter superadditivity inequalities based on the $α$-th ($α\geqslant 1$) power of $l_1$-norm of coherence are presented for multiqubit states under certain conditions, which include the existing results as special cases. These superadditivity relations give rise to finer characterization of the coherence distributions among the subsystems of a multipartit…
Quantum coherence and non-classical correlation are key features of quantum world. Quantifying coherence and non-classical correlation are two key tasks in quantum information theory. First, we present a bona fide measure of quantum coherence by utilizing the Hellinger distance. This coherence measure is proven to fulfill all the criteria of a well defined coherence measure, including the strong monotonicity in the resource theories of quantum coherence. In terms of this coherence measure, the distribution of quantum coherence in multipartite systems is studied and a corresponding polygamy rel…
Quantum coherence is the outcome of the superposition principle. Recently, it has been theorized as a quantum resource, and is the premise of quantum correlations in multipartite systems. It is therefore interesting to study the coherence content and its distribution in a multipartite quantum system. In this work, we show analytically as well as numerically the reciprocity between coherence and mixedness of a quantum state. We find that this trade-off is a general feature in the sense that it is true for large spectra of measures of coherence and of mixedness. We also study the distribution of…
We show that the quantum interference between downconverted photon pairs and photons from coherent laser light can produce a maximally path entangled N-photon output component with a fidelity greater than 90% for arbitrarily high photon numbers. A simple beam splitter operation can thus transform the 2-photon coherence of down-converted light into an almost optimal N-photon coherence.
The quantum component in uncertainty relation can be naturally characterized by the quantum coherence of a quantum state, which is of paramount importance in quantum information science. Here, we experimentally investigate quantum uncertainty relations construed with relative entropy of coherence, $l_1$ norm of coherence and coherence of formation. In stead of quantum state tomographic technology, we employ the classical shadow algorithm for the detection of lower bounds in quantum uncertainty relations. With an all optical setup, we prepare a family of quantum states whose purity can be fully…
We show that temporal two-photon interference effects involving the signal and idler photons created by parametric down-conversion can be fully characterized in terms of the variations of two length parameters--called the biphoton path-length difference and the biphoton path-asymmetry- length difference--which we construct using the six different length parameters that a general two-photon interference experiment involves. We perform an experiment in which the effects of the variations of these two parameters can be independently controlled and studied. In our experimental setup, which does no…
Quantum coherence characterizes the non-classical feature of a single party system with respect to a local basis. Based on a recently introduced resource framework, coherence can be regarded as a resource and be systematically manipulated and quantified. Operationally, considering the projective measurement of the state in the computational basis, coherence quantifies the intrinsic randomness of the measurement outcome conditioned on all the other quantum systems. However, such a relation is only proven when randomness is characterized by the Von-Neumann entropy. In this work, we consider seve…
