Measuring Quantum Coherence with Entanglement

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 entanglement that can be generated via incoherent operations applied to the system and an incoherent ancilla. The…

• JT
  John Templeton Foundation
• FQ
  Foundational Questions Institute

  Award: FQXi-RFP3-1317
• DO
  Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India
• ER
  European Research Council

  Award: 637352