Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:1805.01989 · Nature Communications

Coherence distillation machines are impossible in quantum thermodynamics

Iman Marvian

Published Jan 7, 2020• 49 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The role of coherence in quantum thermodynamics has been extensively studied in the recent years and it is now well-understood that coherence between different energy eigenstates is a resource independent of other thermodynamics resources, such as work. A fundamental remaining open question is whether the laws of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics allow the existence of a coherence distillation machine, i.e., a machine that, by possibly consuming work, obtains pure coherent states from mixed states, at a nonzero rate. This is related to another fundamental question: Starting from many copies of noisy quantum clocks which are (approximately) synchronized with a reference clock, can one distill synchronized clocks in pure states, at a non-zero rate? Surprisingly, we find that the answer to both questions is negative for generic (full-rank) mixed states. However, at the same time, it is possible to distill a sub-linear number of pure coherent states with a vanishing error.

DOI
10.1038/s41467-019-13846-3

Related papers

Arbitrary Amplification of Quantum Coherence in Asymptotic and Catalytic Transformation

Naoto Shiraishi, Ryuji Takagi

Quantum coherence is one of the fundamental aspects distinguishing classical and quantum theories. Coherence between different energy eigenstates is particularly important, as it serves as a valuable resource under the law of energy conservation. A fundamental question in this setting is how well one can prepare good coherent states from low coherent states and whether a given coherent state is convertible to another one. Here, we show that any low coherent state is convertible to any high coherent state arbitrarily well in two operational settings: asymptotic and catalytic transformations. For a variant of asymptotic coherence manipulation where one aims to prepare desired states in local subsystems, the rate of transformation becomes unbounded regardless of how weak the initial coherence is. In a non-asymptotic transformation with a catalyst, a helper state that locally remains in the original form after the transformation, we show that an arbitrary state can be obtained from any low coherent state. Applying this to the standard asymptotic setting, we find that a catalyst can increase the coherence distillation rate significantly-from zero to infinite rate. We also prove that such anomalous transformation requires small but nonzero coherence in relevant modes, establishing the condition under which a sharp transition of the operational capability occurs. Our results provide a general characterization of the coherence transformability in these operational settings and showcase their peculiar properties compared to other common resource theories such as entanglement and quantum thermodynamics.

arXiv:2308.12338•Physical Review Letters•May 2, 2024•15 citations

The coherent measurement cost of coherence distillation

Varun Narasimhachar

Quantum coherence—an indispensable resource for quantum technologies—is known to be distillable from a noisy form using operations that cannot create it. However, distillation exacts a hidden coherent measurement cost, which has not previously been examined. We devise the target effect construction to characterize this cost through detailed conditions on the coherence-measuring structure necessary in any process realizing exact (maximal or non-maximal) or approximate distillation. As a corollary, we lower-bound the requisite measurement coherence, as quantified by operationally-relevant measures. We then consider the asymptotic limit of distilling from many copies of a given noisy coherent state, where we offer rigorous arguments to support the conjecture that the (necessary and sufficient) coherent measurement cost scales extensively in the number of copies. We also show that this cost is no smaller than the coherence of measurements saturating the scaling law in the generalized quantum Stein's lemma. Our results and conjectures apply to any task whereof coherence distillation is an incidental outcome (e.g., incoherent randomness extraction). But if pure coherence is the only desired outcome, our conjectures would have the cautionary implication that the measurement cost is often higher than the distilled yield, in which case coherence should rather be prepared afresh than distilled from a noisy input.

arXiv:2308.07719•Quantum•Apr 15, 2025•0 citations

Optimal Distillation of Qubit Clocks

Sujay Kazi, Iman Marvian

We study coherence distillation under time-translation-invariant operations: given many copies of a quantum state containing coherence in the energy eigenbasis, the aim is to produce a purer coherent state while respecting the time-translation symmetry. This symmetry ensures that the output remains synchronized with the input and that the process can be realized by energy-conserving unitaries coupling the system to a reservoir initially in an energy eigenstate, thereby modeling thermal operations supplemented by a work reservoir or battery. For qubit systems, we determine the optimal asymptotic fidelity and show that it is governed by the purity of coherence, a measure of asymmetry derived from the right logarithmic derivative (RLD) Fisher information. In particular, we find that the lowest achievable infidelity (one minus fidelity) scales as $1/N$ times the reciprocal of the purity of coherence of each input qubit, where $N$ is the number of copies, giving this quantity a clear operational meaning. We additionally study many other interesting aspects of the coherence distillation problem for qubits, including computing higher-order corrections to the lowest achievable infidelity up to $O(1/N^3)$, and expressing the optimal channel as a boundary value problem that can be solved numerically.

arXiv:2510.08493•Oct 9, 2025•0 citations

Experimentally obtaining maximal coherence via assisted distillation process

Kang‐Da Wu, Zhibo Hou, Han-Sen Zhong +4 more

Quantum coherence, which quantifies the superposition properties of a quantum state, plays an indispensable role in quantum resource theory. A recent theoretical work [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{116}, 070402 (2016)] studied the manipulation of quantum coherence in bipartite or multipartite systems under the protocol Local Incoherent Operation and Classical Communication (LQICC). Here we present the first experimental realization of obtaining maximal coherence in assisted distillation protocol based on linear optical system. The results of our work show that the optimal distillable coherence rate can be reached even in one-copy scenario when the overall bipartite qubit state is pure. Moreover, the experiments for mixed states showed that distillable coherence can be increased with less demand than entanglement distillation. Our work might be helpful in the remote quantum information processing and quantum control.

arXiv:1702.06606•Optica•Apr 13, 2017•50 citations

Probabilistic Distillation of Quantum Coherence

Kun Fang, Xin Wang, Ludovico Lami +2 more

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.

arXiv:1804.09500•Physical Review Letters•Aug 17, 2018•86 citations

The extraction of work from quantum coherence

Kamil Korzekwa, Matteo Lostaglio, Jonathan Oppenheim +1 more

The interplay between quantum-mechanical properties, such as coherence, and classical notions, such as energy, is a subtle topic at the forefront of quantum thermodynamics. The traditional Carnot argument limits the conversion of heat to work; here we critically assess the problem of converting coherence to work. Through a careful account of all resources involved in the thermodynamic transformations within a fully quantum-mechanical treatment, we show that there exist thermal machines extracting work from coherence arbitrarily well. Such machines only need to act on individual copies of a state and can be reused. On the other hand, we show that for any thermal machine with finite resources not all the coherence of a state can be extracted as work. However, even bounded thermal machines can be reused infinitely many times in the process of work extraction from coherence.

arXiv:1506.07875•New Journal of Physics•Feb 18, 2016•313 citations
The role of coherence in quantum thermodynamics has been extensively studied in the recent years and it is now well-understood that coherence between different energy eigenstates is a resource independent of other thermodynamics resources, such as work. A fundamental remaining open question is whether the laws of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics allow the existence of a coherence distillation machine, i.e., a machine that, by possibly consuming work, obtains pure coherent states from mixed states, at a nonzero rate. This is related to another fundamental question: Starting from many copies of noisy quantum clocks which are (approximately) synchronized with a reference clock, can one distill synchronized clocks in pure states, at a non-zero rate? Surprisingly, we find that the answer to both questions is negative for generic (full-rank) mixed states. However, at the same time, it is possible to distill a sub-linear number of pure coherent states with a vanishing error.
Quantum coherence is one of the fundamental aspects distinguishing classical and quantum theories. Coherence between different energy eigenstates is particularly important, as it serves as a valuable resource under the law of energy conservation. A fundamental question in this setting is how well one can prepare good coherent states from low coherent states and whether a given coherent state is convertible to another one. Here, we show that any low coherent state is convertible to any high coherent state arbitrarily well in two operational settings: asymptotic and catalytic transformations. For a variant of asymptotic coherence manipulation where one aims to prepare desired states in local subsystems, the rate of transformation becomes unbounded regardless of how weak the initial coherence is. In a non-asymptotic transformation with a catalyst, a helper state that locally remains in the original form after the transformation, we show that an arbitrary state can be obtained from any low coherent state. Applying this to the standard asymptotic setting, we find that a catalyst can increase the coherence distillation rate significantly-from zero to infinite rate. We also prove that such anomalous transformation requires small but nonzero coherence in relevant modes, establishing the condition under which a sharp transition of the operational capability occurs. Our results provide a general characterization of the coherence transformability in these operational settings and showcase their peculiar properties compared to other common resource theories such as entanglement and quantum thermodynamics.
Quantum coherence—an indispensable resource for quantum technologies—is known to be distillable from a noisy form using operations that cannot create it. However, distillation exacts a hidden coherent measurement cost, which has not previously been examined. We devise the target effect construction to characterize this cost through detailed conditions on the coherence-measuring structure necessary in any process realizing exact (maximal or non-maximal) or approximate distillation. As a corollary, we lower-bound the requisite measurement coherence, as quantified by operationally-relevant measures. We then consider the asymptotic limit of distilling from many copies of a given noisy coherent state, where we offer rigorous arguments to support the conjecture that the (necessary and sufficient) coherent measurement cost scales extensively in the number of copies. We also show that this cost is no smaller than the coherence of measurements saturating the scaling law in the generalized quantum Stein's lemma. Our results and conjectures apply to any task whereof coherence distillation is an incidental outcome (e.g., incoherent randomness extraction). But if pure coherence is the only desired outcome, our conjectures would have the cautionary implication that the measurement cost is often higher than the distilled yield, in which case coherence should rather be prepared afresh than distilled from a noisy input.
We study coherence distillation under time-translation-invariant operations: given many copies of a quantum state containing coherence in the energy eigenbasis, the aim is to produce a purer coherent state while respecting the time-translation symmetry. This symmetry ensures that the output remains synchronized with the input and that the process can be realized by energy-conserving unitaries coupling the system to a reservoir initially in an energy eigenstate, thereby modeling thermal operations supplemented by a work reservoir or battery. For qubit systems, we determine the optimal asymptotic fidelity and show that it is governed by the purity of coherence, a measure of asymmetry derived from the right logarithmic derivative (RLD) Fisher information. In particular, we find that the lowest achievable infidelity (one minus fidelity) scales as 1/N1/N1/N times the reciprocal of the purity of coherence of each input qubit, where NNN is the number of copies, giving this quantity a clear operational meaning. We additionally study many other interesting aspects of the coherence distillation problem for qubits, including computing higher-order corrections to the lowest achievable infidelity up to O(1/N3)O(1/N^3)O(1/N3), and expressing the optimal channel as a boundary value problem that can be solved numerically.
Quantum coherence, which quantifies the superposition properties of a quantum state, plays an indispensable role in quantum resource theory. A recent theoretical work [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{116}, 070402 (2016)] studied the manipulation of quantum coherence in bipartite or multipartite systems under the protocol Local Incoherent Operation and Classical Communication (LQICC). Here we present the first experimental realization of obtaining maximal coherence in assisted distillation protocol based on linear optical system. The results of our work show that the optimal distillable coherence rate can be reached even in one-copy scenario when the overall bipartite qubit state is pure. Moreover, the experiments for mixed states showed that distillable coherence can be increased with less demand than entanglement distillation. Our work might be helpful in the remote quantum information processing and quantum control.
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 interplay between quantum-mechanical properties, such as coherence, and classical notions, such as energy, is a subtle topic at the forefront of quantum thermodynamics. The traditional Carnot argument limits the conversion of heat to work; here we critically assess the problem of converting coherence to work. Through a careful account of all resources involved in the thermodynamic transformations within a fully quantum-mechanical treatment, we show that there exist thermal machines extracting work from coherence arbitrarily well. Such machines only need to act on individual copies of a state and can be reused. On the other hand, we show that for any thermal machine with finite resources not all the coherence of a state can be extracted as work. However, even bounded thermal machines can be reused infinitely many times in the process of work extraction from coherence.