While Bohr's complementarity principle constitutes a bedrock of quantum mechanics with profound implications, coherence, as a defining feature of the quantum realm originating from the superposition principle, pervades almost every quantum consideration. By exploiting the algebraic and geometric structure of state-channel interaction, we show that an information-theoretic measure of coherence and a quantitative symmetry-asymmetry complementarity emerge naturally from the formalism of quantum mechanics. This is achieved by decomposing the state-channel interaction into a symmetric part and an asymmetric part, which satisfy a conservation relation. The symmetric part is represented by the symmetric Jordan product, and the asymmetric part is synthesized by the skew-symmetric Lie product. The latter further leads to a significant extension of the celebrated Wigner--Yanase skew information, and has an operational interpretation as quantum coherence of a state with respect to a channel. This not only presents a basic and alternative framework for addressing complementarity, but also puts the study of coherence in a broad context involving channels. Fundamental properties of the symmetry-asymmetry complementarity are revealed, and applications and implications are illustrated via several prototypical channels as well as the Mach--Zehnder interferometry, in which the fringe visibility is linked to symmetry and the which-path is linked to asymmetry.
While Bohr's complementarity principle constitutes a bedrock of quantum mechanics with profound implications, coherence, as a defining feature of the quantum realm originating from the superposition principle, pervades almost every quantum consideration. By exploiting the algebraic and geometric structure of state-channel interaction, we show that an information-theoretic measure of coherence and a quantitative symmetry-asymmetry complementarity emerge naturally from the formalism of quantum mechanics. This is achieved by decomposing the state-channel interaction into a symmetric part and an asymmetric part, which satisfy a conservation relation. The symmetric part is represented by the symmetric Jordan product, and the asymmetric part is synthesized by the skew-symmetric Lie product. The latter further leads to a significant extension of the celebrated Wigner--Yanase skew information, and has an operational interpretation as quantum coherence of a state with respect to a channel. This not only presents a basic and alternative framework for addressing complementarity, but also puts the study of coherence in a broad context involving channels. Fundamental properties of the symmetry-asymmetry complementarity are revealed, and applications and implications are illustrated via several prototypical channels as well as the Mach--Zehnder interferometry, in which the fringe visibility is linked to symmetry and the which-path is linked to asymmetry.
Coherence and complementarity are two important themes in quantum mechanics, which have been widely and thoroughly investigated. Recently, with the rapid development of quantum information theory, various measures have been introduced for quantitatively studying the coherence and complementarity. However, most of these studies are independent of each other in that they focus on only one theme, for example, the wave-particle duality and Heisenberg uncertainty principle are usually regarded as manifestation of Bohr’s complementary principle, while coherence is a quantum feature closely related to quantum superposition. During the past few years, there has been a flurry of research interest in the study of quantum coherence from the quantum resource-theoretic point of view. In this paper, we establish two information conservation relations and employ them to characterize complementarity and quantum coherence. As an illustration of the main results, we discuss these two themes in the Mach-Zehnder interferometer. Our study reveals that these two quantum themes are closely related to each other. Our main results are listed as follows. Firstly, we establish two information conservation relations, one is based on " Bures distance versus fidelity” and the other based on " symmetry versus asymmetry”. Then we employ these information conservation relations to investigate coherence and complementarity. Specifically, we provide an explanation of the " Bures distance versus fidelity” trade-off relation from the information conservation perspective, establish the link between the information conservation relation and wave-particle duality, and derive the famous Englert inequality concerning " fringe visibility versus path distinguishability” from the information conservation relation. Furthermore, in the general framework of state-channel interaction, we derive " symmetry versus asymmetry” trade-off relation and explain it as an information conservation relation, reveal its intrinsic relations with coherence and complementarity. Lastly, we demonstrate that the two information conservation relations are closely interrelated, and we also discuss the coherence, decoherence and complementarity in the Mach-Zehnder interferometer, explicitly, we reveal that the Bures distance can be regarded as a lower bound of the asymmetry of state-channel interaction while fidelity is an upper bound of the symmetry of state-channel interaction. We expect that our information conservation relation can provide a unified framework for the study of coherence and complementarity.
In terms of the metric-adjusted skew information (an important and versatile class of quantum Fisher information), which generalizes the seminal Wigner-Yanase skew information arising naturally from the study of quantum measurement, we propose a family of coherence measures of states relative to quantum channels, and reveal their basic properties such as unitary covariance, convexity, and monotonicity. Furthermore, we evaluate these coherence measures of states relative to several prototypical quantum channels, and make a comparative study for this family of coherence measures with relative entropy of coherence. This provides a general approach to coherence of states relative to quantum channels, which also captures decoherence on the states caused by quantum channels and asymmetry of states relative to quantum channels.
Symmetry, as well as the dual concept of asymmetry, are essential, powerful and ubiquitous in physics and nature. Motivated by the original Wigner-Yanase skew information and its extension by Dyson ( Wigner E. P. and Yanase M. M., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. , 49 (1963) 910), which quantifies the information content of a quantum state skew to a conserved observable and may be reinterpreted as asymmetry of a state with respect to an observable, we address the issue of quantifying asymmetry and symmetry of states with respect to Lie groups and Lie algebras. We elucidate that correlations arise naturally from the difference between asymmetries of global and local states. This provides a fundamental insight into correlations. The idea is further illustrated by several examples.
Quantum complementarity is a fundamental feature of quantum systems and has captivated the physics research community for nearly a century, with significant advancements emerging in recent decades. This review traces the historical evolution of the concept of complementarity, beginning with Bohr's original formulation. It then explores its modern quantification through complementarity relations and its profound connection to the foundational postulates of quantum theory. Furthermore, it delves into key related developments, such as the operational definition of complementarity in the context of incompatible observables, its potential links with quantum uncertainty relations and contextuality, its various applications, and other pertinent topics. This review aims to serve physicists interested in quantum resources, quantum correlations, and the foundational principles of quantum mechanics.
Quantum coherence is an important feature that distinguishes quantum mechanics from classical physics. In this paper, we study the coherence of a quantum state with respect to a quantum channel, and introduce a coherence measure in terms of the generalized Wigner–Yanase–Dyson skew information. The basic properties and operational significance of the measure are expounded in detail, which shows that it is indeed a veritable quantity and satisfies many desirable conditions intuitively required for the coherence measures. We illustrate the significance of characterizing channels from the coherence perspective through some examples. Finally, we consider the average coherence of a state based on the generalized Wigner–Yanase–Dyson skew information with respect to any complete mutually unbiased bases in prime power dimensional systems, as well as with respect to all orthonormal bases, and show that these two averages are equivalent since they both can be seen as the coherence of the quantum state with respect to the depolarizing quantum channel.
Abstract Interference, which has its origin in the superposition principle, is one of the hallmarks of wave mechanics and constitutes a versatile resource for many information processing tasks. As such, it is actually a manifestation of coherence. Despite its long history in the development of physics, quantitative studies of interference are still an important topic. Traditionally, interference is often characterized via the fringe visibility from an operational perspective. This is experimentally convenient. However, from a theoretic perspective, it is desirable to reveal information‐theoretic aspects of interference. In this work, coherence of a state (with respect to a unitary operator parameterized by the interfering paths and phase shifts in multi‐path interference) is first quantified in terms of a generalized version of the Wigner‐Yanase skew information, two natural quantifiers of interference are then introduced via this coherence measure. Basic properties of these quantifiers of interference are further revealed, and the concepts are illustrated through several examples.