Abstract Quantum coherence originates from the principle of quantum superposition, and multilevel quantum coherence contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the principle of quantum superposition. In this paper, we investigate multilevel coherence through fidelity. We define a quantity F a ( ρ , σ ) through fidelity and prove that this quantity satisfies several important properties. Based on this quantity F a ( ρ , σ ) , we define an indicator M a k ( ρ ) to characterize multilevel coherence, and prove that this indicator satisfies non-negativity, convexity, monotonicity (non-increasing under ( k − 1 ) -coherence-preserving operation), and subadditivity.
Abstract Quantum coherence originates from the principle of quantum superposition, and multilevel quantum coherence contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the principle of quantum superposition. In this paper, we investigate multilevel coherence through fidelity. We define a quantity F a ( ρ , σ ) through fidelity and prove that this quantity satisfies several important properties. Based on this quantity F a ( ρ , σ ) , we define an indicator M a k ( ρ ) to characterize multilevel coherence, and prove that this indicator satisfies non-negativity, convexity, monotonicity (non-increasing under ( k − 1 ) -coherence-preserving operation), and subadditivity.
Quantum coherence, present whenever a quantum system exists in a superposition of multiple classically distinct states, marks one of the fundamental departures from classical physics.Quantum coherence has recently been investigated rigorously within a resource-theoretic formalism.However, the finer-grained notion of multilevel coherence, which explicitly takes into account the number of superposed classical states, has remained relatively unexplored.A comprehensive analysis of multilevel coherence, which acts as the singleparty analogue to multipartite entanglement, is essential for understanding natural quantum processes as well as for gauging the performance of quantum technologies.Here, we develop the theoretical and experimental groundwork for characterizing and quantifying multilevel coherence.We prove that nontrivial levels of purity are required for multilevel coherence, as there is a ball of states around the maximally mixed state that do not exhibit multilevel coherence in any basis.We provide a simple, necessary, and sufficient analytical criterion to verify the presence of multilevel coherence, which leads to a complete classification of multilevel coherence for three-level systems.We present the robustness of multilevel coherence, a bona fide quantifier, which we show to be numerically computable via semidefinite programming and experimentally accessible via multilevel coherence witnesses, which we introduce and characterize.We further verify and lower bound the robustness of multilevel coherence by performing a semi-device-independent phase discrimination task, which is implemented experimentally with four-level quantum probes in a photonic setup.Our results contribute to understanding the operational relevance of genuine multilevel coherence, also by demonstrating the key role it plays in enhanced phase discrimination-a primitive for quantum communication and metrology-and suggest new ways to reliably and effectively test the quantum behavior of physical systems.
Quantum coherence, present whenever a quantum system exists in a superposition of multiple classically distinct states, marks one of the fundamental departures from classical physics. Quantum coherence has recently been investigated rigorously within a resource-theoretic formalism. However, the finer-grained notion of multilevel coherence, which explicitly takes into account the number of superposed classical states, has remained relatively unexplored. A comprehensive analysis of multi-level coherence, which acts as the single-party analogue to multi-partite entanglement, is essential for understanding natural quantum processes as well as for gauging the performance of quantum technologies. Here we develop the theoretical and experimental groundwork for characterizing and quantifying multilevel coherence. We prove that non-trivial levels of purity are required for multilevel coherence, as there is a ball of states around the maximally mixed state that do not exhibit multilevel coherence in any basis. We provide a simple necessary and sufficient analytical criterion to verify multilevel coherence, which leads to a complete classification for three-level systems. We present the robustness of multilevel coherence, a bona fide quantifier which we show to be numerically computable via semidefinite programming and experimentally accessible via multilevel coherence witnesses. We further verify and lower-bound the robustness of multilevel coherence by performing a semi-device-independent phase discrimination task, implemented experimentally with four-level probes in a photonic setup. Our results contribute to understanding the operational relevance of genuine multilevel coherence, also by demonstrating the key role it plays in enhanced phase discrimination---a primitive for quantum communication and metrology---and suggest new ways to reliably test the quantum behaviour of physical systems.
Quantum coherence is an essential ingredient in quantum information processing and plays a central role in emergent fields such as nanoscale thermodynamics and quantum biology. However, our understanding and quantitative characterization of coherence as an operational resource are still very limited. Here we show that any degree of coherence with respect to some reference basis can be converted to entanglement via incoherent operations. This finding allows us to define a novel general class of measures of coherence for a quantum system of arbitrary dimension, in terms of the maximum bipartite entanglement that can be generated via incoherent operations applied to the system and an incoherent ancilla. The resulting measures are proven to be valid coherence monotones satisfying all the requirements dictated by the resource theory of quantum coherence. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach by proving that the fidelity-based geometric measure of coherence is a full convex coherence monotone, and deriving a closed formula for it on arbitrary single-qubit states. Our work provides a clear quantitative and operational connection between coherence and entanglement, two landmark manifestations of quantum theory and both key enablers for quantum technologies.
Computing quantum state fidelity will be important to verify and characterize states prepared on a quantum computer. In this work, we propose novel lower and upper bounds for the fidelity F ( ρ , σ ) based on the ``truncated fidelity'' F ( ρ m , σ ) , which is evaluated for a state ρ m obtained by projecting ρ onto its m -largest eigenvalues. Our bounds can be refined, i.e., they tighten monotonically with m . To compute our bounds, we introduce a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm, called Variational Quantum Fidelity Estimation, that involves three steps: (1) variationally diagonalize ρ , (2) compute matrix elements of σ in the eigenbasis of ρ , and (3) combine these matrix elements to compute our bounds. Our algorithm is aimed at the case where σ is arbitrary and ρ is low rank, which we call low-rank fidelity estimation, and we prove that no classical algorithm can efficiently solve this problem under reasonable assumptions. Finally, we demonstrate that our bounds can detect quantum phase transitions and are often tighter than previously known computable bounds for realistic situations.
Sub- and super-fidelity describe respectively the lower and super bound of fidelity of quantum states. In this paper, we obtain several properties of sub- and super-fidelity for both finite- and infinite-dimensional quantum systems. Furthermore, let H be a separable complex Hilbert space and ϕ : 𝒮(H) → 𝒮(H) a map, where 𝒮(H) denotes the convex set of all states on H. We show that, if dim H < ∞, or, if dim H = ∞ and ϕ is surjective, then the following statements are equivalent: (1) ϕ preserves the super-fidelity; (2) ϕ preserves the fidelity; (3) ϕ preserves the sub-fidelity; (4) there exists a unitary or an anti-unitary operator U on H such that ϕ(ρ) = UρU† for all ρ ∈ 𝒮(H).
This paper defines the fidelity of recovery of a tripartite quantum state on systems A,B, and C as a measure of how well one can recover the full state on all three systems if system A is lost and a recovery operation is performed on system C alone. The surprisal of the fidelity of recovery (its negative logarithm) is an information quantity which obeys nearly all of the properties of the conditional quantum mutual information I(A;B∣C), including non-negativity, monotonicity with respect to local operations, duality, invariance with respect to local isometries, a dimension bound, and continuity. We then define a (pseudo) entanglement measure based on this quantity, which we call the ``geometric squashed entanglement.'' We prove that the geometric squashed entanglement is a 1-LOCC monotone (i.e., monotone nonincreasing with respect to local operations and classical communication from Bob to Alice), that it vanishes if and only if the state on which it is evaluated is unentangled, and that it reduces to the geometric measure of entanglement if the state is pure. We also show that it is invariant with respect to local isometries, subadditive, continuous, and normalized on maximally entangled states. We next define the surprisal of measurement recoverability, which is an information quantity in the spirit of quantum discord, characterizing how well one can recover a share of a bipartite state if it is measured. We prove that this discordlike quantity satisfies several properties, including non-negativity, faithfulness on classical-quantum states, invariance with respect to local isometries, a dimension bound, and normalization on maximally entangled states. This quantity, combined with a recent breakthrough of Fawzi and Renner, makes it possible to characterize states with discord nearly equal to zero as being approximate fixed points of entanglement-breaking channels (equivalently, they are recoverable from the state of a measuring apparatus). Finally, we discuss a multipartite fidelity of recovery and several of its properties.