The coherent superposition of states is one of the characteristic features that results in nonclassical phenomena [1,2]. Quantum coherence constitutes a powerful physical resource for implementing various tasks such as quantum algorithms [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11], quantum metrology [12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20], quantum channel discrimination [21,22,23,24,25,26,27], witnessing quantum correlations [28,29,30,31,32,33,34], and quantum phase transitions and transport phenomena [35,36,37,38,39,40]. The resource theory of quantum coherence has been flourishing in recent years, it not only establishes a rigorous framework to quantify coherence but also provides a platform to understand quantum coherence from a different perspective [23,41].
Any quantum resource theory is described by two fundamental ingredients, namely, the free states and the free operations [42]. For the resource theory of coherence, the free states are quantum states that are diagonal in a prefixed reference basis. The free operations are not uniquely specified. Motivated by different physical considerations, several free operations are presented, such as incoherent operations (IOs) [41], maximally incoherent operations (MIOs) [43], strictly incoherent operations (SIOs) [44,45], dephasing-covariant incoherent operations (DIOs) [46,47,48], and genuinely incoherent operations (GIOs) [49].
Two fundamental problems in coherence resource theory are state convertibility and resource quantification [23,42]. The state convertibility problem is asking whether for two coherent states there exists a free operation converting one quantum state into the other. The goal of resource quantification is to quantify the amount of coherence in a quantum state. Recalling that coherent states cannot be created from incoherent states via free operations, it is intuitive to assume that
Both problems mentioned above—state convertibility and resource quantification—are in fact closely connected. A state ρ can be converted into σ via free operations if and only if
The study of state convertibility is moving ahead since the question is proposed [41], it is completely answered in pure states or one-qubit case under IOs, SIOs, or MIOs [44,46,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63]. The convertibility between mixed states seems to have remained unexplored territory. The difficulty lies in the complexity of pure state decomposition which results in an infinite number of measure conditions for characterizing convertibility of mixed states [57]. We investigate convertibility for coherent states under GIOs. In fact, GIOs are at the core of the resource theory of quantum coherence from both physical realization and dissecting the structure of SIOs and IOs [64]. Note that there is a hierarchical relationship between IOs, SIOs, MIOs, and GIOs [23],
For any 𝒪 ∈ {IOs, SIOs, MIOs}, we define
The complete set of coherence monotones for characterizing state convertibility under GIOs is found. In fact, convexity of the robustness of coherence is a good candidate. Moreover, it is also key to convert off-diagonal part of coherent states under more general free operations. Our results induce a useful tool for deciding maximally coherent states in the set of all states with fixed diagonal elements. This produces the so-called majorization condition of determining convertibility from pure states to mixed states under SIOs.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we briefly present the resource theory of quantum coherence. In Section 3, we will give our main results. Section 4 is a summary of our findings. The appendix is the proof of our results.
Throughout the paper, we consider the d dimensional Hilbert space H and adopt the computational basis
In order to characterize conversion of coherent states under GIOs, we need a key measure originated from the task of maximizing the mean value of an observable [65]. Let
In the following, we list some elementary properties of
- (i)
for every quantum state ρ andC_M^{{\rm{GIOs}}}\left(\rho \right) \ge 0 if ρ ∈ I;C_M^{{\rm{GIOs}}}\left(\rho \right) = 0 - (ii)
Monotonicity under all GIOs Φ:
(7) C_M^{{\rm{GIOs}}}\left({\Phi \left(\rho \right)} \right) \le C_M^{{\rm{GIOs}}}\left(\rho \right); - (iii)
Monotonicity for average coherence:
(8) for all {Kj} specifying every GIO, where\sum\limits_j {{p_j}C_M^{{\rm{GIOs}}}\left({{\rho _j}} \right) \le C_M^{{\rm{GIOs}}}\left(\rho \right)} and{\rho _j} = {{{K_j}\rho K_j^\dagger} \over {{p_j}}} ;{p_j} = Tr\left({{K_j}\rho K_j^\dagger} \right) - (iv)
Non-increasing under mixing of quantum states:
(9) for any set of states {ρj} and any pj ≥ 0 with ∑j pj = 1;C_M^{{\rm{GIOs}}}(\sum\limits_j {{p_j}{\rho _j}}) \le \sum\limits_j {{p_j}C_M^{{\rm{GIOs}}}({\rho _j})} - (v)
is related to the l1-norm of coherence by the inequalityC_M^{{\rm{GIOs}}}\left(\rho \right) (10) here M = (Mij) and Cl1 (ρ) = ∑i≠j |ρij| is the l1-norm of coherence;\matrix{ {{{{C_{{l_1}}}(\rho)} \over {d - 1}}{{\min}_{1 \le i \ne j \le d}}\{|{M_{ij}}|\}} \hfill & {\le C_M^{{\rm{GIOs}}}(\rho)} \hfill \cr {\le {C_{{l_1}}}(\rho){{\max}_{1 \le i \ne j \le d}}\{|{M_{ij}}|\},} \hfill & {} \hfill \cr} - (vi)
is also related to the robustness of coherence by the inequalityC_M^{{\rm{GIOs}}}\left(\rho \right) (11) here0 \le C_M^{{\rm{GIOs}}}\left(\rho \right) \le {{{C_{{\rm{R}}OC}}\left(\rho \right)} \over d}, is the robustness of coherence [66].{C_{{\rm{R}}OC}} = \mathop {\min}\limits_{\tau \in {\rm{S}}} \{s:{{\rho + s\tau} \over {1 + s}} \in {\rm{I}}\} = \mathop {\min}\limits_{\delta \in {\rm{I}}} \left\{{s:\rho \le \left({1 + s} \right)\delta} \right\}
Specially, if M = |ψ+〉〈ψ+|, then combining Theorem 1 with Theorem 2 of [67], we have
For general M ∈ Ω, there exist a probability distribution {pi} and diagonal unitary matrices {Ui} such that
Now, we are in a position to give our main result.
There exists some GIO Φ such that
Theorem 1 tells convertibility between pure states is impossible except for diagonal-unitary equivalent states. A parallel result in multipartite entanglement is almost all n-qubit pure states with n ≥ 3 can neither be reached nor be converted into any other LU-inequivalent state via deterministic LOCC [68]. On the other hand, deterministic convertibility between incoherent-unitary inequivalent pure states is possible under IOs, DIOs, SIOs, and MIOs [46,51]. Thus, compared with other free operations in the coherence resource theory, GIOs are more matching to LOCC in multipartite entanglement theory from the point of state convertibility.
For one-parameter maximally mixed states [52,67]
Based on Theorem 1, we can provide a nice majorization condition that determines the convertibility from pure states to mixed states under SIOs, IOs, and MIOs.
For
By the hierarchical relationship SIOs ⊆ IOs ⊆ MIOs, there exists some IO or MIO Φ with Φ(|ψ〉〈ψ|) = σ if (|ψ1|2, ⋯ , |ψd|2)t ≺ (σ11, ⋯ , σdd)t.
For
It is well-known that convertibility between pure states is completely characterized by majorization relation [51]. Theorem 2 can be regarded as an extension when the output state is mixed. Although a structural characterization of coherence conversion for the output mixed state is provided in terms of a finite number of measure conditions [57], such conditions are somewhat hard to verify because pure state decomposition is involved. In comparison, Theorem 2 is more handy because we need only to check a majorization relation.
The core for the proof of Theorem 2 is to find maximally coherent states (MCS) in the set of all states S with fixed diagonal elements, here an MCS means a state from which all other states of S can be created via GIOs.
We remark that the existence of MCS in a particular set of states S has independent meaning, because one may not be able to prepare all states of choice in many situations. Suppose we are bound to a particular set of states S, can we find a notion of maximally coherent state in S. By Theorem 1, a natural choice of S is the set of all states with fixed diagonal elements, that is, S = {(ρij) : ρii = pi, i = 1, 2, ⋯ , d}, here {pi} is a fixed probability distribution. In fact, there exists an MCS in S. Our result reads as follows.
Let
By the hierarchical relationship
Theorem 1 and Theorem 3 show that coherent mixed states cannot be converted into pure states in general. This is a parallel result of no-go theorem of purification for coherent mixed states of discrete-variable and Gaussian systems [60,69]. It shows a strong limit on the efficiency of perfect coherent purification under GIOs.
We also remark that parallel discussion of Theorem 3 in quantum entanglement is the existence of a maximally entangled state within a given set of states with fixed spectrum. This is the Problem 5 in the Open Quantum Problems List maintained by the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Vienna [70,71]. It is newly shown that maximally entangled mixed states for a fixed spectrum do not always exist [72].
By Theorem 1, if diagonal elements of ρ and σ are not completely equal in the same position, then both ρ ↛ σ and σ ↛ ρ under GIOs hold true. However, exact conditions for realizing conversion between off-diagonal parts of coherent states can also be found.
For any 𝒪 ∈ {GIOs, DIOs MIOs}, we define
There exists some Φ ∈ 𝒪 such that
Imaginarity as resource is a hot topic and recently receives much attention (see [73] and the references therein). For any coherence measure C,
Among the most fundamental questions in quantum coherence theory is state convertibility, it is aimed to study whether incoherent operations can introduce an order on the set of coherent states, that is, whether, given two coherent states ρ and σ, either ρ can be transformed into σ or vice versa. Since the question of state convertibility in coherence resource theory is proposed [41], understanding the exact conditions for existence of incoherent transformations between coherent states has attracted a lot of work [23]. In this work, we have determined the exact conditions for coherence conversion under GIOs. Our conditions show that coherence measures from convexity of the robustness of coherence are central. Based on these conditions, maximally incoherent states in a particular set are classified. This induces the majorization condition of determining the convertibility from pure states to mixed states under SIOs. Furthermore, conditions of conversion between off-diagonal parts of coherent states are also characterized. The study of state convertibility for general resource theory has also been discussed recently [50,78].
There still exist some interesting open questions. First, note that the existence proof of our Theorem 1 is not constructive, given two states satisfying coherence order, a problem is how to construct desired GIOs realizing convertibility. Second, can we offer an efficient algorithm to compute
Proofs of all results in this paper are given in Appendix A.
Before giving the proof of our main results, we firstly recall some fundamental properties of GIOs. In fact, the notion of GIOs is equivalent to the Schur channels [79,80,81]. Suppose Φ is trace-preserving completely positive maps on density operators, the following statements are equivalent:
- (1)
Φ is a GIO, that is, a Schur channel;
- (2)
Φ preserves incoherent basis states, that is, Φ(|i〉〈i|) = |i〉〈i| for all i;
- (3)
For every Kraus representation of
, all Kraus operators {Kj} are diagonal;\Phi \left(\rho \right) = \sum\nolimits_j {{K_j}\rho K_j^\dagger} - (4)
Φ can be written as a Schur product form: Φ(ρ) = τ ∘ ρ, where the matrix τ is positive semidefinite such that its diagonals are all equal to 1, and the Schur product is denoted by τ ∘ ρ = (τijρij).