No Arabic abstract
Coherence and entanglement are fundamental concepts in resource theory. The coherence (entanglement) of assistance is the coherence (entanglement) that can be extracted assisted by another party with local measurement and classical communication. We introduce and study the general coherence of assistance. First, in terms of real symmetric concave functions on the probability simplex, the coherence of assistance and the entanglement of assistance are shown to be in one-to-one correspondence. We then introduce two classes of quantum states: the assisted maximally coherent states and the assisted maximally entangled states. They can be transformed into maximally coherent or entangled pure states with the help of another party using local measurement and classical communication. We give necessary conditions for states to be assisted maximally coherent or assisted maximally entangled. Based on these, a unified framework between coherence and entanglement including coherence (entanglement) measures, coherence (entanglement) of assistance, coherence (entanglement) resources is proposed. Then we show that the coherence of assistance as well as entanglement of assistance are strictly larger than the coherence of convex roof and entanglement of convex roof for all full rank density matrices. So all full rank quantum states are distillable in the assisted coherence distillation.
As an analogy of best separable approximation (BSA) in the framework of entanglement theory, here we concentrate on the notion of best incoherent approximation, with application to characterizing and quantifying quantum coherence. From both analytical and numerical perspectives, we have demonstrated that the weight-based coherence measure displays some unusual properties, in sharp contrast to other popular coherence quantifiers. First, by deriving a closed formula for qubit states, we have showed the weight-based coherence measure exhibits a rich (geometrical) structure even in this simplest case. Second, we have identified the existence of mixed maximally coherent states (MMCS) with respect to this coherence measure and discussed the characteristic feature of MMCS in high-dimensional Hilbert spaces. Especially, we present several important families of MMCS by gaining insights from the numerical simulations. Moreover, it is pointed out that some considerations in this work can be generalized to general convex resource theories and a numerical method of improving the computational efficiency for finding the BSA is also discussed.
As discussed in Wiseman and Vaccaro [quant-ph/9906125], the stationary state of an optical or atom laser far above threshold is a mixture of coherent field states with random phase, or, equivalently, a Poissonian mixture of number states. We are interested in which, if either, of these descriptions of $rho_{ss}$, is more natural. In the preceding paper we concentrated upon whether descriptions such as these are physically realizable (PR). In this paper we investigate another relevant aspect of these ensembles, their robustness. A robust ensemble is one for which the pure states that comprise it survive relatively unchanged for a long time under the system evolution. We determine numerically the most robust ensembles as a function of the parameters in the laser model: the self-energy $chi$ of the bosons in the laser mode, and the excess phase noise $ u$. We find that these most robust ensembles are PR ensembles, or similar to PR ensembles, for all values of these parameters. In the ideal laser limit ($ u=chi=0$), the most robust states are coherent states. As the phase noise $ u$ or phase dispersion $chi$ is increased, the most robust states become increasingly amplitude-squeezed. We find scaling laws for these states. As the phase diffusion or dispersion becomes so large that the laser output is no longer quantum coherent, the most robust states become so squeezed that they cease to have a well-defined coherent amplitude. That is, the quantum coherence of the laser output is manifest in the most robust PR states having a well-defined coherent amplitude. This lends support to the idea that robust PR ensembles are the most natural description of the state of the laser mode. It also has interesting implications for atom lasers in particular, for which phase dispersion due to self-interactions is expected to be large.
We show the properties and characterization of coherence witnesses. We show methods for constructing coherence witnesses for an arbitrary coherent state. We investigate the problem of finding common coherence witnesses for certain class of states. We show that finitely many different witnesses $W_1, W_2, cdots, W_n$ can detect some common coherent states if and only if $sum_{i=1}^nt_iW_i$ is still a witnesses for any nonnegative numbers $t_i(i=1,2,cdots,n)$. We show coherent states play the role of high-level witnesses. Thus, the common state problem is changed into the question of when different high-level witnesses (coherent states) can detect the same coherence witnesses. Moreover, we show a coherent state and its robust state have no common coherence witness and give a general way to construct optimal coherence witnesses for any comparable states.
We introduce and study the l1 norm of coherence of assistance both theoretically and operationally. We first provide an upper bound for the l1 norm of coherence of assistance and show a necessary and sufficient condition for the saturation of the upper bound. For two and three dimensional quantum states, the analytical expression of the l1 norm of coherence of assistance is given. Operationally, the mixed quantum coherence can always be increased with the help of another party s local measurement and one way classical communication since the l1 norm of coherence of assistance, as well as the relative entropy of coherence of assistance, is shown to be strictly larger than the original coherence. The relation between the l1 norm of coherence of assistance and entanglement is revealed. Finally, a comparison between the l1 norm of coherence of assistance and the relative entropy of coherence of assistance is made.
The remarkable phenomenon of catalyst tells us that adding a catalyst could help state transformation. In this paper, we consider the problem of catalyst-assisted probabilistic coherence distillation for mixed states under strictly incoherent operations. To this end, we first present the necessary and sufficient conditions for distilling a target pure coherent state from an initial mixed state via stochastic strictly incoherent operations and the maximal probability of obtaining the target pure state from the initial state. With the help of these results, we present the necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a catalyst that increases the maximal transformation probability.