Quantum coherence is one of the key features that fuels applications for which quantum mechanics exceeds the power of classical physics. This explains the considerable efforts that were undertaken to quantify coherence via quantum resource theories. An application of the resulting framework to concrete technological tasks is however largely missing. Here, we address this problem and connect the ability of an operation to detect or create coherence to the performance of interferometric experiments.
We use a parametric down-conversion source pumped by a short coherence-length continuous-wave (CW) diode laser to perform two-photon interferometry in an intermediate regime between the more familiar Franson-type experiments with a long coherence-length pump laser, and the short pulsed pump "time-bin" experiments pioneered by Gisin's group. The use of a time-bin-like Mach-Zehnder interferometer in the CW pumping beam induces coherence between certain two-photon amplitudes, while the CW nature of the experiment prevents the elimination of remaining incoherent ones. The experimental results high…
We provide a self-contained quantum description of the interference produced by macromolecules diffracted by a grating, with particular reference to fullerene interferometry experiments. We analyze the processes inducing loss of coherence consisting in beam preparation (collimation setup and thermal spread of the wavelengths of the macromolecules) and in environmental disturbances. The results show a good agreement with experimental data published by Zeilinger's group and highlight the analogy with optics. Our analysis gives some hints for planning future experiments.
Induced Coherence in Quantum and Classical Interferometry: Origin and Control
The Institute of Mathematical Sciences（马蒂马拉科学院）；Homi Bhabha National Institute（霍米·巴巴国立学院）；Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University（贝拿勒斯印度教大学理学院）；Centre for Quantum Science and Technology, Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan（锡克沙'O'安苏丹量子科学与技术中心）；Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata（加尔各答印度科学教育与研究学院）
This paper presents a tutorial review of nonlocal interferometry. The role of the Feynman propagator in optical coherence is also discussed, including the possibility of generating optical coherence and entanglement outside of the light cone.
One of the important goals of present research is to control and manipulate coherence in a broad variety of systems, such as semiconductor spintronics, biological photosynthetic systems, superconducting qubits and complex atomic networks. Over the past decades interferometry of atoms and molecules has proven to be a powerful tool to explore coherence. Here we demonstrate a near-field interferometer based on the Talbot effect, which allows to measure finite-range phase coherence of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. We apply this interferometer to study the build-up of phase coherence after…
A new type of electron sources has emerged which permits to inject particles in a controllable manner, one at a time, into an electronic circuit. Such single electron sources make it possible to fully exploit the particles' quantum nature. We determine the single-particle coherence length from the decay of the Aharonov-Bohm oscillations as a function of the imbalance of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer connected to a single electron source. The single-particle coherence length is of particular importance as it is an intrinsic property of the source in contrast to the dephasing length.
We analyze the coherence properties of polarized neutrons, after they have interacted with a magnetic field or a phase shifter undergoing different kinds of statistical fluctuations. We endeavor to probe the degree of disorder of the distribution of the phase shifts by means of the loss of quantum mechanical coherence of the neutron. We find that the notion of entropy of the shifts and that of decoherence of the neutron do not necessarily agree. In some cases the neutron wave function is more coherent, even though it has interacted with a more disordered medium.
We study Landau-Zener dynamics in a double quantum dot filled with two electrons, where the spin states can become correlated with charge states and the level velocity can be tuned in a time-dependent fashion. We show that a correct interpretation of experimental data is only possible when finite-time effects are taken into account. In addition, our formalism allows the study of partial adiabatic dynamics in the presence of phonon-mediated hyperfine relaxation and charge-noise-induced dephasing. Our findings demonstrate that charge noise severely impacts the visibility of Landau-Zener-Stückelb…
The coherence effects induced by external photons coupled to matter waves inside a Mach-Zehnder three-grating interferometer are analyzed. Alternatively to atom-photon entanglement scenarios, the model considered here only relies on the atomic wave function and the momentum shift induced in it by the photon scattering events. A functional dependence is thus found between the observables, namely the fringe visibility and the phase shift, and the transversal momentum transfer distribution. A good quantitative agreement is found when comparing the results obtained from our model with the experime…
Low-coherence interferometry with undetected mid-infrared photons in the high-gain regime
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light（马克斯·普朗克光科学研究所）；Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg（埃尔朗根-纽伦堡大学）；University of Bologna（博洛尼亚大学）；Institute for Quantum Optics, Ulm University（乌尔姆大学量子光学研究所）；Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 8523 - PhLAM - Physique des Lasers Atomes et Molécules（里尔大学、法国国家科学研究中心，UMR 8523 - 激光与原子分子物理实验室）；Raicol Crystals（拉伊科尔晶体公司）；Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Technion—Israel Institute of Technology（以色列理工学院电气与计算机工程学院）；Institute for Photon Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo（东京大学光子科学与技术研究所）
We study the loss of spatial coherence in the extended wave function of fullerenes due to collisions with background gases. From the gradual suppression of quantum interference with increasing gas pressure we are able to support quantitatively both the predictions of decoherence theory and our picture of the interaction process. We thus explore the practical limits of matter wave interferometry at finite gas pressures and estimate the required experimental vacuum conditions for interferometry with even larger objects.
Seeded SU(1,1) interferometry for Fourier-domain optical coherence tomography
ICFO – Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology（光子科学研究所，巴塞罗那科技研究所）；Department of Signal Theory and Communications, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya（信号理论与通信系，加泰罗尼亚理工大学）
The Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer is a versatile tool for analyzing the joint properties of photon pairs, relying on a truly quantum interference effect between two-photon probability amplitudes. While the theory behind this form of two-photon interferometry is well established, the development of advanced photon sources and exotic two-photon states has highlighted the importance of quantifying precisely what information can and cannot be inferred from features in a Hong-Ou-Mandel interference trace. Here we examine Hong-Ou-Mandel interference with regard to a particular class of states, so-ca…
Attosecond delay metrology beyond the photon coherence time with spectrally resolved Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometry
University of Ottawa（渥太华大学）；National Research Council of Canada（加拿大国家研究委员会）；Joint Centre for Extreme Photonics, National Research Council and University of Ottawa（极端光子学联合中心（加拿大国家研究委员会与渥太华大学））；School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Portsmouth（朴茨茅斯大学数学与物理学院）；Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth（朴茨茅斯大学宇宙学与引力研究所）；Institute for Quantum Studies, Chapman U（查普曼大学量子研究学院）
A zero-area four-blade perfect crystal neutron interferometer (NI) possess a decoherence-free subspace (DFS) for low-frequency mechanical vibrations and thus is easier to site. %has the potential to broaden the application of crystal-based neutron interferometry to a higher number of neutron sources. However, unlike the standard three-blade Mach-Zehnder NI the ideal contrast of this four-blade NI geometry is less than one. By applying a recently introduced quantum information model for dynamical diffraction we show that the contrast for the four-blade DFS NI can be increased by offsetting the …
Chirped-pulse interferometry (CPI) captures the metrological advantages of quantum Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM) interferometry in a completely classical system. Modified HOM interferometers are the basis for a number of seminal quantum-interference effects. Here, the corresponding modifications to CPI allow for the first observation of classical analogues to the HOM peak and quantum beating. They also allow a new classical technique for generating phase super-resolution exhibiting a coherence length dramatically longer than that of the laser light, analogous to increased two-photon coherence lengths i…
A setup based on the Franson optical interferometer is analyzed, which allows us to detect the coherence properties of Cooper pairs emerging via tunneling from a superconductor in contact with two one-dimensional channels. By tuning the system parameters we show that both the internal coherence of the emitted Cooper pairs, which is proportional to Pippard's length, and the de Broglie wavelength of their center-of-mass motion can be measured via current-current correlation measurements.
Interferometry of single particles with internal degrees of freedom is investigated. We discuss the interference patterns obtained when an internal state evolution device is inserted into one or both the paths of the interferometer. The interference pattern obtained is not uniquely determined by the completely positive maps (CPMs) that describe how the devices evolve the internal state of a particle. By using the concept of gluing of CPMs, we investigate the structure of all possible interference patterns obtainable for given trace preserving internal state CPMs. We discuss what can be inferre…
A three-body quantum correlation is calculated for two particles reflecting from a mirror. Correlated interference, a consequence of conservation of energy and momentum, occurs for states in which the order of reflection is indeterminate. The resulting quantum joint probability density function exhibits interference with diverse characteristics, depending on the coherence lengths of the substates. Marginal probability density functions can contain information about the quantum nature of all three bodies, even if only one particle is measured. Microscopic particles reflecting from a mesoscopic …
From the interaction between a frequency comb and an atomic qubit, we derive quantum protocols for the determination of the carrier-envelope offset phase, using the qubit coherence as a reference, and without the need of frequency doubling or an octave spanning comb. Compared with a trivial interference protocol, the multipulse protocol results in a polynomial enhancement of the sensitivity O(N^{-2}) with the number N of laser pulses involved. We present specializations of the protocols using optical or hyperfine qubits, Lambda-schemes and Raman transitions, and introduce methods where the ref…
Ramsey interferometry provides a natural way to determine the coherence time of most qubit systems. Recent experiments on quantum dots however, demonstrated that dynamical nuclear spin polarization can strongly influence the measurement process, making it difficult to extract the $T_2^*$ coherence time using optical Ramsey pulses. Here, we demonstrate an alternative method for spin coherence measurement that is based on first-order coherence of photons generated in spin-flip Raman scattering. We show that if a quantum emitter is driven by a weak monochromatic laser, Raman coherence is determin…
We introduce and implement an interferometric technique based on chirped femtosecond laser pulses and nonlinear optics. The interference manifests as a high-visibility (> 85%) phase-insensitive dip in the intensity of an optical beam when the two interferometer arms are equal to within the coherence length of the light. This signature is unique in classical interferometry, but is a direct analogue to Hong-Ou-Mandel quantum interference. Our technique exhibits all the metrological advantages of the quantum interferometer, but with signals at least 10^7 times greater. In particular we demonstrat…
We examine two setups that reveal different operational implications of path-phase complementarity for single photons in a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). In both setups, the which-way (WW) information is recorded in the polarization state of the photon serving as a "flying which-way detector". In the "predictive" variant, using a {\em fixed} initial state, one obtains duality relation between the probability to correctly predict the outcome of either a which-way (WW) or which-phase (WP) measurement (equivalent to the conventional path-distinguishibility-visibility). In this setup, only one…
Interferometry is an indispensable tool across all the natural sciences. Recently, a new type of interferometer based on phase-sensitive Fano resonances has been proposed and implemented. In these Fano interferometers, the two arms are formed by a spectrally broad continuum channel, and a spectrally narrow resonant bound state scattering channel, respectively. We show that the textbook relation between interference visibility and coherence known from double-slit- or Mach-Zehnder-interferometers does not apply to Fano interferometers, because the physical origin of the interference extrema is d…
Spatial interferometry, based on the measurement of total absorbed power, can be used to determine the state of coherence of the electromagnetic field to which any energy-absorbing structure is sensitive. The measured coherence tensor can be diagonalized to give the amplitude, phase, polarization patterns, and responsivities of the individual electromagnetic modes through which the structure can absorb energy. Because the electromagnetic modes are intimately related to dynamical modes of the system, information about collective excitations can be found. We present simulations, based on the Dis…
We investigate the maximally coherent states to provide a refinement in quantifying coherence and give a measure-independent definition of the coherence-preserving operations. A maximally coherent state can be considered as the resource to create arbitrary quantum states of the same dimension by merely incoherent operations. We propose that only the maximally coherent states should achieve the maximal value for a coherence measure and use this condition as an additional criterion for coherence measures to obtain a refinement in quantifying coherence which excludes the invalid and inefficient c…
Quantum-optical coherence tomography (Q-OCT) is an interferometric technique for axial imaging offering several advantages over conventional methods. Chirped-pulse interferometry (CPI) was recently demonstrated to exhibit all of the benefits of the quantum interferometer upon which Q-OCT is based. Here we use CPI to measure axial interferograms to profile a sample accruing the important benefits of Q-OCT, including automatic dispersion cancellation, but with 10 million times higher signal. Our technique solves the artifact problem in Q-OCT and highlights the power of classical correlation in o…
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.
Quasi-particles are elementary excitations of condensed matter quantum phases. Demonstrating that they keep quantum coherence while propagating is a fundamental issue for their manipulation for quantum information tasks. Here, we consider anyons, the fractionally charged quasi-particles 20 of the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect occurring in two-dimensional electronic conductors in high magnetic fields. They obey anyonic statistics, intermediate between fermionic and bosonic. Surprisingly, anyons show large quantum coherence when transmitted through the localized states of electronic Fabry-Pérot…
Ramsey interferometers (RIs) using internal electronic or nuclear states find wide applications in science and engineering. We develop a matter wave Ramsey interferometer for motional quantum states exploiting the S- and D-bands of an optical lattice and identify the different de-phasing and de-coherence mechanisms. We implement a band echo technique, employing repeated $π$-pulses. This suppresses the de-phasing evolution and significantly increase the coherence time of the motional state interferometer by one order of magnitude. We identify thermal fluctuations as the main mechanism for the r…
In an adiabatic rapid passage experiment, the Bloch vector of a two-level system (qubit) is inverted by slowly inverting an external field to which it is coupled, and along which it is initially aligned. In twisted rapid passage, the external field is allowed to twist around its initial direction with azimuthal angle $ϕ(t)$ at the same time that it is inverted. For polynomial twist: $ϕ(t) \sim Bt^{n}$. We show that for $n \geq 3$, multiple avoided crossings can occur during the inversion of the external field, and that these crossings give rise to strong interference effects in the qubit trans…
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…
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…
We characterize the operational capabilities of quantum channels which can neither create nor detect quantum coherence vis-à-vis efficiently manipulating coherence as a resource. We study the class of dephasing-covariant operations (DIO), unable to detect the coherence of any input state, as well as introduce an operationally-motivated class of channels $ρ$-DIO which is tailored to a specific input state. We first show that pure-state transformations under DIO are completely governed by majorization, establishing necessary and sufficient conditions for such transformations and adding to the li…
Despite being one of the hallmarks of quantum physics, there is a lack of operational interpretations of quantum coherence. Here we provide an operational interpretation of coherence of a quantum system, in terms of the amount of noise that is to be injected in order to fully decohere it. In particular, we show that in the asymptotic limit, the minimum amount of noise that is required to fully decohere a quantum system, is equal to the relative entropy of coherence. This quantifies the erasure cost of quantum coherence. We employ the entropy exchanged between system and environment during the …
Quantum resource theory under different classes of quantum operations advances multiperspective understandings of inherent quantum-mechanical properties, such as quantum coherence and quantum entanglement. We establish hierarchies of different operations for manipulating coherence and entanglement in distributed settings, where at least one of the two spatially separated parties are restricted from generating coherence. In these settings, we introduce new classes of operations and also characterize those maximal, i.e., the resource-non-generating operations, progressing beyond existing studies…
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…
Time-domain interferometry (TDI) is a method to probe space-time correlations among particles in condensed matter systems. Applying TDI to quantum systems raises the general question, whether two-time correlations can be reliably measured without adverse impact of the measurement backaction onto the dynamics of the system. Here, we show that a recently developed quantum version of TDI (QTDI) indeed can access the full quantum-mechanical two-time correlations without backaction. We further generalize QTDI to weak classical continuous-mode coherent input states, alleviating the need for single-p…
Coherence and entanglement are the two most crucial resources for various quantum information processing tasks. Here, we study the interplay of coherence and entanglement under the action of different three qubit quantum cloning operations. Considering certain well-known quantum cloning machines (input state independent and dependent), we provide examples of coherent and incoherent operations performed by them. We show that both the output entanglement and coherence could vanish under incoherent cloning operations. Coherent cloning operations on the other hand, could be used to construct a uni…
In quantum information, most information processing processes involve quantum channels. One manifestation of a quantum channel is quantum operation acting on quantum states. The coherence of quantum operations can be considered as a quantum resource, which can be exploited to perform certain quantum tasks. From the viewpoint of Choi-Jamiołkowski isomorphism, we study the coherence of quantum operations in the framework of resource theory. We define the phase-out superoperation and give the operation which transforms the Choi-Jamiołkowski state of a quantum operation to the Choi-Jamiołkowski st…
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…
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 …
We characterize operationally meaningful quantum gains in a paradigmatic model of lossless multiple-phase interferometry and stress insufficiency of the analysis based solely on the concept of quantum Fisher information. We show that the advantage of the optimal simultaneous estimation scheme amounts to a constant factor improvement when compared with schemes where each phase is estimated separately -- contrary to a widely cited results claiming a better precision scaling in terms of the number of phases involved.
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…
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…
