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Journal of Physics A Mathematical and Theoretical

Quantifying channel coherence via the norm distance

Mingfei Ye, Yu Luo, Yongming Li

Published Nov 27, 2023• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract Quantifying the number of resources contained in a physical object has been one of the core topics in the resource theory of coherence. In this paper, we introduce the dynamical coherence measures based on a class of norms in the classical channel setting. It is proved that it satisfies faithfulness, decreases monotonically under the maximally incoherent superchannels, and is convex. Moreover, we show that it satisfies subadditivity under both the composition and tensor product of channels. Especially, the diamond measure as a special case is discussed in detail, it can reduce to trace norm of coherence, satisfies amortization inequality, and can be calculated efficiently using a semidefinite program. In addition, we introduce the creation-coherent diamond measure and find that neither the detection coherence nor the creation coherence of a channel exceeds the coherence of the channel, which does not exceed the purity of the channel. Second, we introduce the corresponding dephasing measure, which is a dynamical coherence measure under the dephasing-covariant incoherent superchannels. Meanwhile, we also introduce the dephasing diamond measure as a special case. Third, we use the dephasing diamond measure to accurately calculate the coherence values of some important noisy channels such as amplitude damping channel, phase damping channel, and depolarizing channel, respectively, and give the sufficient and necessary conditions for an unital qubit channel with a parameter probability vector to be a coherent channel. Finally, the operational interpretation of our diamond measure in the binary channel discrimination task is investigated.

DOI
10.1088/1751-8121/ad1015

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Abstract Quantifying the number of resources contained in a physical object has been one of the core topics in the resource theory of coherence. In this paper, we introduce the dynamical coherence measures based on a class of norms in the classical channel setting. It is proved that it satisfies faithfulness, decreases monotonically under the maximally incoherent superchannels, and is convex. Moreover, we show that it satisfies subadditivity under both the composition and tensor product of channels. Especially, the diamond measure as a special case is discussed in detail, it can reduce to trace norm of coherence, satisfies amortization inequality, and can be calculated efficiently using a semidefinite program. In addition, we introduce the creation-coherent diamond measure and find that neither the detection coherence nor the creation coherence of a channel exceeds the coherence of the channel, which does not exceed the purity of the channel. Second, we introduce the corresponding dephasing measure, which is a dynamical coherence measure under the dephasing-covariant incoherent superchannels. Meanwhile, we also introduce the dephasing diamond measure as a special case. Third, we use the dephasing diamond measure to accurately calculate the coherence values of some important noisy channels such as amplitude damping channel, phase damping channel, and depolarizing channel, respectively, and give the sufficient and necessary conditions for an unital qubit channel with a parameter probability vector to be a coherent channel. Finally, the operational interpretation of our diamond measure in the binary channel discrimination task is investigated.
A fundamental problem in quantum information is to understand the operational significance of quantum resources. Quantum resource theories (QRTs) provide a powerful theoretical framework that aids in the analysis and comprehension of the operational meaning of these resources. Early resource theories primarily focused on analyzing static quantum resources. Recently, interest in the study of dynamic quantum resources has been growing. In this paper, we utilize superchannel theory to describe the dynamic resource theory of quantum coherence. In this dynamic resource theory, we treat classical channels as free channels and consider two classes of free superchannels that preserve channel incoherence [maximally incoherent superchannels (MISCs) and dephasing-covariant incoherent superchannels (DISCs)] as free resources. We regard the quantum Fourier transform as the golden unit of dynamic coherence resources. We first establish the one-shot theory of dynamic coherence cost and dynamic coherence distillation, which involves converting the quantum Fourier transform into an arbitrary quantum channel using MISCs and DISCs. Next, we introduce a class of free superchannels known as $\ensuremath{\delta}$-MISCs, which asymptotically generate negligible dynamic coherence. Finally, we provide upper and lower bounds for the one-shot catalytic dynamic coherence cost of quantum channels under the action of these $\ensuremath{\delta}$-MISC superchannels.
We study quantum channels that are close to another channel with weakly additive Holevo information, and we derive upper bounds on their classical capacity. Examples of channels with weakly additive Holevo information are entanglement-breaking channels, unital qubit channels, and Hadamard channels. Related to the method of approximate degradability, we define approximation parameters for each class above, which measure how close an arbitrary channel is to satisfying the respective property. This gives us upper bounds on the classical capacity in terms of functions of the approximation parameters, as well as an outer bound on the dynamic capacity region of a quantum channel. Since these parameters are defined in terms of the diamond distance, the upper bounds can be computed efficiently using semidefinite programming (SDP). We exhibit the usefulness of our method with two example channels: a convex mixture of amplitude damping and depolarizing noise and a composition of amplitude damping and dephasing noise. For both channels, our bounds perform well in certain regimes of the noise parameters in comparison to a recently derived SDP upper bound on the classical capacity. Along the way, we define the notion of a generalized channel divergence (which includes the diamond distance as an example), and we prove that for jointly covariant channels these quantities are maximized by purifications of a state invariant under the covariance group. This latter result may be of independent interest.
Operational resource theories of quantum channels require measuresthat quantify intrinsic dynamical structure independently of particularinput states or simulation protocols. We introduce admissibility distance,defined as the diamond-norm distance from a bipartite quantum channelto the free set of locally implementable product channels, and developit as a resource monotone for channel-level dynamical nonlocality. Weprove that the measure is faithful, monotone under local superchannels,and subadditive under both sequential composition and tensor products,providing a compositional operational framework for quantifying deviationfrom local dynamics.To calibrate the framework, we analyse an exactly solvable two-qubitentangling family, recovering the analytical diamond distance in the noiseless limit and deriving rigorous contraction bounds under local unital noise,including depolarising channels, before extending the construction to arbitrary finite-dimensional systems through induced trace-norm contractionon the traceless operator subspace.As an illustrative application, we implement admissibility distance forsimulated Atomic Frequency Comb (AFC) retrieval channels, validatingthe numerical implementation against identity, depolarising and phasedamping benchmarks before applying it to structured retrieval noise. Theresulting numerical experiments indicate that admissibility distance responds substantially more strongly to small structured perturbations thanconventional state-fidelity diagnostics within the benchmark considered,suggesting its potential utility as an operational early-warning metric forquantum-memory benchmarking.Unlike state-based quantities such as entangling power or Choi-stateentanglement, admissibility distance measures the operational separation ofa quantum channel from locally implementable dynamics themselves. Theresulting framework provides a mathematically controlled and operationallyinterpretable geometry for analysing noisy quantum channels and resourcetheoretic aspects of quantum dynamics. Full 70 article programme https://github.com/jamessutton600613-png/GQR/blob/main/Programme_Index.md The programme contains both standalone and self referencing articles. These can all be read as notes in proof of GQR1.
We define the resource non-increasing (RNI) framework to study the dynamical resource theory. With this definition, we propose several potential quantification candidates under various free operation sets. For explicit demonstrations, we quantify the quantum dynamical coherence in the scenarios with and without post-selective measurements. Correspondingly, we show that the maximally incoherent operations (MIO) and the incoherent operations (IO) in the static coherence resource theory are free in the sense of dynamical coherence. We also provide operational meanings for the measures by the quantum discrimination tasks. Moreover, for the dynamical total coherence, we also present convenient measures and give the analytic calculation for the amplitude damping channel.
We develop a general framework for higher-order quantum resources that treats the resourcefulness of quantum states, channels, and supermaps (also called processes) in a unified manner. By generalizing well-established concepts from resource theories of states and channels, we introduce and study supermap resource monotones and supermap distillation and dilution. As free supermaps, we consider free networks (supermaps that can be implemented with free channels), compatible supermaps (sets of supermaps closed under arbitrary composition), and maximally free superchannels. Specializing to approximate channel-to-channel conversions, we show that under mild assumptions, the conversion error with respect to the diamond distance and the worst-case infidelity coincide. We then apply the general framework to resource theories of dynamical coherence, where we establish the existence of largest sets of compatible supermaps. By characterizing these sets with semidefinite constraints, we show that they are strictly larger than the corresponding free networks but do not contain all maximally free superchannels. We finish by investigating the operational differences of these sets in one-shot channel distillation and dilution, providing solutions for both tasks in the parallel setting and for dilution in the adaptive setting.
Recently, there has been a renewed interest in the quantification of coherence or other coherencelike concepts within the framework of quantum resource theory. However, rigorously defined or not, the notion of coherence or decoherence has already been used by the community for decades since the advent of quantum theory. Intuitively, the definitions of coherence and decoherence should be two sides of the same coin. Therefore, a natural question is raised: How can the conventional decoherence processes, such as the von Neumann--L\"uders (projective) measurement postulation or partially dephasing channels, fit into the bigger picture of the recently established theoretical framework? Here we show that the state collapse rules of the von Neumann or L\"uders-type measurements, as special cases of genuinely incoherent operations (GIOs), are consistent with the resource theories of quantum coherence. New hierarchical measures of coherence are proposed for the L\"uders-type measurement and their relationship with measurement-dependent discord is addressed. Moreover, utilizing the fixed-point theory for C∗{C}^{*}C∗ algebra, we prove that GIOs indeed represent a particular type of partially dephasing (phase-damping) channels which have a matrix representation based on the Schur product. By virtue of the Stinespring dilation theorem, the physical realizations of incoherent operations are investigated in detail and we find that GIOs in fact constitute the core of strictly incoherent operations and generally incoherent operations and the unspeakable notion of coherence induced by GIOs can be transferred to the theories of speakable coherence by the corresponding permutation or relabeling operators.