The ability to distill quantum coherence is pivotal for optimizing the performance of quantum technologies; however, such a task cannot always be accomplished with certainty. Here we develop a general framework of probabilistic distillation of quantum coherence in a one-shot setting, establishing fundamental limitations for different classes of free operations. We first provide a geometric interpretation for the maximal success probability, showing that under maximally incoherent operations (MIO) and dephasing-covariant incoherent operations (DIO) the problem can be simplified into efficiently computable semidefinite programs. Exploiting these results, we find that DIO and its subset of strictly incoherent operations have equal power in the probabilistic distillation of coherence from pure input states, while MIO are strictly stronger. We then prove a fundamental no-go result: Distilling coherence from any full-rank state is impossible even probabilistically. We further find that in some conditions the maximal success probability can vanish suddenly beyond a certain threshold in the distillation fidelity. Finally, we consider probabilistic coherence distillation assisted by a catalyst and demonstrate, with specific examples, its superiority to the unassisted and deterministic cases.
The ability to distill quantum coherence is pivotal for optimizing the performance of quantum technologies; however, such a task cannot always be accomplished with certainty. Here we develop a general framework of probabilistic distillation of quantum coherence in a one-shot setting, establishing fundamental limitations for different classes of free operations. We first provide a geometric interpretation for the maximal success probability, showing that under maximally incoherent operations (MIO) and dephasing-covariant incoherent operations (DIO) the problem can be simplified into efficiently computable semidefinite programs. Exploiting these results, we find that DIO and its subset of strictly incoherent operations have equal power in the probabilistic distillation of coherence from pure input states, while MIO are strictly stronger. We then prove a fundamental no-go result: Distilling coherence from any full-rank state is impossible even probabilistically. We further find that in some conditions the maximal success probability can vanish suddenly beyond a certain threshold in the distillation fidelity. Finally, we consider probabilistic coherence distillation assisted by a catalyst and demonstrate, with specific examples, its superiority to the unassisted and deterministic cases.
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 introduce a family of coherence monotones generalizing the robustness of coherence as well as the modified trace distance of coherence, and show that they admit an operational interpretation in characterizing the fidelity of distillation under different classes of operations. By providing an explicit formula for these quantities for pure states, we show that the one-shot distillable coherence under MIO, DIO, strictly incoherent operations, and incoherent operations is equal for all pure states.
The resource framework of quantum coherence was introduced by Baumgratz, Cramer, and Plenio [Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 140401 (2014)] and further developed by Winter and Yang [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 120404 (2016)]. We consider the one-shot problem of distilling pure coherence from a single instance of a given resource state. Specifically, we determine the distillable coherence with a given fidelity under incoherent operations (IO) through a generalization of the Winter-Yang protocol. This is compared to the distillable coherence under maximal incoherent operations (MIO) and dephasing-covariant incoherent operations (DIO), which can be cast as a semidefinite programme, that has been presented previously by Regula et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 010401 (2018)]. Our results are given in terms of a smoothed min-relative entropy distance from the incoherent set of states, and a variant of the hypothesis-testing relative entropy distance, respectively. The one-shot distillable coherence is also related to one-shot randomness extraction. Moreover, from the one-shot formulas under IO, MIO, and DIO, we can recover the optimal distillable rate in the many-copy asymptotics, yielding the relative entropy of coherence. These results can be compared with previous work by some of the present authors [Zhao et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 070403 (2018)] on one-shot coherence formation under IO, MIO, DIO and also SIO. This shows that the amount of distillable coherence is essentially the same for IO, DIO, and MIO, despite the fact that the three classes of operations are very different. We also relate the distillable coherence under strictly incoherent operations (SIO) to a constrained hypothesis testing problem and explicitly show the existence of bound coherence under SIO in the asymptotic regime.
The resource theory of quantum coherence is an important topic in quantum information science. Standard coherence distillation and dilution problems have been thoroughly studied. In this paper, we introduce and study the problem of one-shot coherence distillation with catalysts. In order to distill more coherence from a state of interest, a catalytic system can be involved and a jointly free operation is applied to both systems. The joint output state should be a maximally coherent state in tensor product with the unchanged catalysts, with some allowable fidelity error. We consider several different definitions of this problem. First, with a small fidelity error in both systems, we show that, even via the smallest free operation class (physically implementable incoherent operations), the distillable coherence of any state with no restriction on the catalysts is infinite, which is a ``coherence embezzling phenomenon.'' We then define and calculate a lower bound for the distillable coherence when the dimension of catalysts is restricted. Finally, in consideration of physical relevance, we define the ``perfect catalysts'' scenario where the catalysts are required to be pure and precisely unchanged. Interestingly, we show that in this setting catalysts basically provide no advantages in pure state distillation via incoherent operations and strictly incoherent operations under certain smoothing restriction. Our work enhances the understanding of catalytic effect in quantum resource theory.
We complete the task of optimal probabilistic coherence distillation protocol, whose aim is to transform a general state into a set of n-level maximally coherent states via strictly incoherent operations (SIO). Specifically, we present the necessary and sufficient condition for the transformation from a mixed state into a pure-state ensemble via SIO. With the aid of this condition and the simplex algorithm, we can accomplish the probabilistic distillation protocol by presenting an analytical expression of the maximal average distillable coherence of a general state and constructing the corresponding operation achieving this bound. Our protocol is a universal protocol since it can be applied to any coherence measure.
Channel simulation using coherence, which refers to realizing a target channel with coherent states and free operations, is a fundamental problem in the quantum resource theory of coherence. The limitations of the accuracy of deterministic channel simulation motivate us to consider the more general probabilistic framework. In this paper, we develop the framework for probabilistic channel simulation using coherence with free operations. When the chosen set of free operations is the maximally incoherent operations, we provide an efficiently computable semidefinite program (SDP) to calculate the maximal success probability and derive the analytic expression of success probability for some special cases. When the chosen set of free operations is the dephasing-covariant incoherent operations (DIO), we show that if the target channel is not a resource nonactivating channel then one cannot simulate it exactly both deterministically and probabilistically. The SDP for maximal success probability of simulating a channel by DIO is also given correspondingly. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We compute analytically the maximal rates of distillation of quantum coherence under strictly incoherent operations (SIO) and physically incoherent operations (PIO), showing that they coincide for all states, and providing a complete description of the phenomenon of bound coherence. In particular, we establish a simple, analytically computable necessary and sufficient criterion for the asymptotic distillability under SIO and PIO. We use this result to show that almost every quantum state is undistillable-only pure states as well as states whose density matrix contains a rank-one submatrix allow for coherence distillation under SIO or PIO, while every other quantum state exhibits bound coherence. This demonstrates the fundamental operational limitations of SIO and PIO in the resource theory of quantum coherence. We show that the fidelity of distillation of a single bit of coherence under SIO can be efficiently computed as a semidefinite program, and investigate the generalization of this result to provide an understanding of asymptotically achievable distillation fidelity.