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arXiv:2610.40852

Colloquium: Quantum information processing with ensembles of identical particles

Matteo Piccolini, Marcin Karczewski, Jin-Shi Xu, Chuan-Feng Li, Guang-Can Guo, Giuseppe Compagno, Farzam Nosrati, Rosario Lo Franco

quant-phSubmitted Oct 29, 2026• Announced Nov 2, 2026
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Abstract

Identical particles underpin most quantum technologies, but the role of indistinguishability in these processes extends far beyond the symmetrization of many-particle states. This Colloquium presents a unified operational perspective on how particle identity, indistinguishability, exchange statistics, and many-particle interference can instead be harnessed as resources for quantum information processing. We first clarify the notions of entanglement and indistinguishability for identical particles, emphasizing their dependence on the accessible measurements and information. We then review how spatial overlap, multiparticle interference, and path identity enable the generation, extraction, protection, and distillation of coherence and entanglement. Their applications to quantum metrology and imaging, state discrimination, teleportation, entanglement swapping, and quantum cloning are examined. Finally, we discuss the thermodynamic role of indistinguishability, from the Gibbs paradox to quantum thermal machines and statistics-driven engines. Across these settings, indistinguishability emerges as a controllable, task-dependent resource whose benefits are determined by state preparation, exchange statistics, interference, and measurement constraints.

AI Summary

This Colloquium reviews how identical-particle ensembles can support quantum information processing beyond the requirement to symmetrize or antisymmetrize many-particle states. Its organizing question is when particle identity, indistinguishability, exchange statistics, and many-particle interference provide operational resources, rather than merely constraints on state descriptions. The review develops a unified operational perspective on entanglement and indistinguishability, emphasizing that their characterization depends on accessible measurements and available information. It then surveys how spatial overlap, multiparticle interference, and path identity can generate, extract, protect, and distill coherence and entanglement. Applications covered include quantum metrology and imaging, state discrimination, teleportation, entanglement swapping, and quantum cloning. A further part addresses thermodynamics, connecting indistinguishability with the Gibbs paradox, quantum thermal machines, and statistics-driven engines. The central synthesis is that indistinguishability is a controllable but task-dependent resource: its usefulness depends jointly on preparation, particle statistics, interference, and measurement constraints. The abstract presents this as a review and conceptual synthesis, not as a report of a new protocol, theorem, or experiment, and gives no quantitative performance bounds or benchmark values. Only the title and abstract are available here, so the detailed operational definitions, evidence supporting individual applications, and any explicitly stated limitations or unresolved questions cannot be assessed.

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Comments
41 pages, 30 figures, 1 table. Colloquium submitted to Review of Modern Physics

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Identical particles underpin most quantum technologies, but the role of indistinguishability in these processes extends far beyond the symmetrization of many-particle states. This Colloquium presents a unified operational perspective on how particle identity, indistinguishability, exchange statistics, and many-particle interference can instead be harnessed as resources for quantum information processing. We first clarify the notions of entanglement and indistinguishability for identical particles, emphasizing their dependence on the accessible measurements and information. We then review how spatial overlap, multiparticle interference, and path identity enable the generation, extraction, protection, and distillation of coherence and entanglement. Their applications to quantum metrology and imaging, state discrimination, teleportation, entanglement swapping, and quantum cloning are examined. Finally, we discuss the thermodynamic role of indistinguishability, from the Gibbs paradox to quantum thermal machines and statistics-driven engines. Across these settings, indistinguishability emerges as a controllable, task-dependent resource whose benefits are determined by state preparation, exchange statistics, interference, and measurement constraints.
This Colloquium reviews how identical-particle ensembles can support quantum information processing beyond the requirement to symmetrize or antisymmetrize many-particle states. Its organizing question is when particle identity, indistinguishability, exchange statistics, and many-particle interference provide operational resources, rather than merely constraints on state descriptions.
The review develops a unified operational perspective on entanglement and indistinguishability, emphasizing that their characterization depends on accessible measurements and available information. It then surveys how spatial overlap, multiparticle interference, and path identity can generate, extract, protect, and distill coherence and entanglement. Applications covered include quantum metrology and imaging, state discrimination, teleportation, entanglement swapping, and quantum cloning. A further part addresses thermodynamics, connecting indistinguishability with the Gibbs paradox, quantum thermal machines, and statistics-driven engines.
The central synthesis is that indistinguishability is a controllable but task-dependent resource: its usefulness depends jointly on preparation, particle statistics, interference, and measurement constraints. The abstract presents this as a review and conceptual synthesis, not as a report of a new protocol, theorem, or experiment, and gives no quantitative performance bounds or benchmark values. Only the title and abstract are available here, so the detailed operational definitions, evidence supporting individual applications, and any explicitly stated limitations or unresolved questions cannot be assessed.
Quantum coherence, an essential feature of quantum mechanics allowing quantum superposition of states, is a resource for quantum information processing. Coherence emerges in a fundamentally different way for nonidentical and identical particles. For the latter, a unique contribution exists linked to indistinguishability that cannot occur for nonidentical particles. Here, we experimentally demonstrate this additional contribution to quantum coherence with an optical setup, showing that its amount directly depends on the degree of indistinguishability, and exploiting it in a quantum phase discrimination protocol. Furthermore, the designed setup allows for simulating fermionic particles with photons, thus assessing the role of exchange statistics in coherence generation and utilization. Our experiment proves that independent indistinguishable particles can offer a controllable resource of coherence and entanglement for quantum-enhanced metrology.
Quantum coherence plays a fundamental and operational role in different areas of physics. A resource theory has been developed to characterize the coherence of distinguishable particles systems. Here we show that indistinguishability of identical particles is a source of coherence, even when they are independently prepared. In particular, under spatially local operations, states that are incoherent for distinguishable particles, can be coherent for indistinguishable particles under the same procedure. We present a phase discrimination protocol, in which we demonstrate the operational advantage of using two indistinguishable particles rather than distinguishable ones. The coherence due to the quantum indistinguishability significantly reduces the error probability of guessing the phase, using the most general measurements. The role played by particle statistics in the protocol is also investigated.
Typical elements of quantum networks are made by identical systems, which are the basic particles constituting a resource for quantum information processing. Whether the indistinguishability due to particle identity is an exploitable quantum resource remains an open issue. Here we study independently prepared identical particles showing that, when they spatially overlap, an operational entanglement exists that can be made manifest by means of separated localized measurements. We prove this entanglement is physical in that it can be directly exploited to activate quantum information protocols, such as teleportation. These results establish that particle indistinguishability is a utilizable quantum feature and open the way to new quantum-enhanced applications.
Identical quantum subsystems can possess a property which does not have any classical counterpart: indistinguishability. As a long-debated phenomenon, identical particles’ indistinguishability has been shown to be at the heart of various fundamental physical results. When concerned with the spatial degree of freedom, identical constituents can be made indistinguishable by overlapping their spatial wave functions via appropriately defined spatial deformations . By the laws of quantum mechanics, any measurement designed to resolve a quantity which depends on the spatial degree of freedom only and performed on the regions of overlap is not able to assign the measured outcome to one specific particle within the system. The result is an entangled state where the measured property is shared between the identical constituents. In this work, we present a coherent formalization of the concept of deformation in a general N -particle scenario, together with a suitable measure of the degree of indistinguishability. We highlight the basic differences with non-identical particles scenarios and discuss the inherent role of spatial deformations as entanglement activators within the spatially localized operations and classical communication operational framework. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Identity, individuality and indistinguishability in physics and mathematics’.
Some measurements in quantum mechanics disturb each other. This has puzzled physicists since the formulation of the theory, but only in recent decades has the incompatibility of measurements been analyzed in depth and detail, using the notion of joint measurability of generalized measurements. In this Colloquium joint measurability and incompatibility are reviewed from the perspective of quantum information science. The Colloquium starts by discussing the basic definitions and concepts. An overview on applications of incompatibility, such as in measurement uncertainty relations, the characterization of quantum correlations, or information processing tasks like quantum state discrimination, is then presented. Finally, emerging directions of research, such as a resource theory of incompatibility as well as other concepts to grasp the nature of measurements in quantum mechanics, are discussed.
SignificanceQuantum coherence has a fundamentally different origin for nonidentical and identical particles since for the latter a unique contribution exists due to indistinguishability. Here we experimentally show how to exploit, in a controllable fashion, the contribution to quantum coherence stemming from spatial indistinguishability. Our experiment also directly proves, on the same footing, the different role of particle statistics (bosons or fermions) in supplying coherence-enabled advantage for quantum metrology. Ultimately, our results provide insights toward viable quantum-enhanced technologies based on tunable indistinguishability of identical building blocks.