Institute of Fundamental Technological Research

The resource theory of imaginarity studies the operational value of imaginary parts in quantum states, operations, and measurements. Here we introduce and study the distillation and conversion of imaginarity in distributed scenario. This arises naturally in bipartite systems where both parties work together to generate the maximum possible imaginarity on one of the subsystems. We give exact solutions to this problem for general qubit states and pure states of arbitrary dimension. We present a scenario that demonstrates the operational advantage of imaginarity: the discrimination of quantum channels without the aid of an ancillary system. We then link this scenario to local operations and classical communications(LOCC) discrimination of bipartite states. We experimentally demonstrate the relevant assisted distillation protocol, and show the usefulness of imaginarity in the aforementioned two tasks.

The emerging quantum technologies rely on our ability to establish and control quantum systems in nonclassical states, exhibiting entanglement and quantum coherence. It is thus crucial to understand how entanglement and coherence can be created in the most efficient way. In this Letter we study optimal ways to create a large amount of quantum coherence via quantum channels. For this, we compare different scenarios, where the channel is acting on an incoherent state, on states which have coherence, and also on subsystems of multipartite quantum states. We show that correlations in multipartite systems do not enhance the ability of a quantum channel to create coherence. We also study the ability of quantum channels to destroy coherence, proving that a channel can destroy more coherence when acting on a subsystem of a bipartite state. Crucially, we also show that the destroyed coherence on a multipartite system can exceed the upper bound of those on the single system when the total state is entangled. Our results significantly simplify the evaluation of the coherence generating capacity of quantum channels, which we also discuss.

Wave-particle duality is one of the basic features of quantum mechanics, giving rise to the use of complex numbers in describing states of quantum systems and their dynamics and interaction. Since the inception of quantum theory, it has been debated whether complex numbers are essential or whether an alternative consistent formulation is possible using real numbers only. Here, we attack this long-standing problem theoretically and experimentally, using the powerful tools of quantum resource theories. We show that, under reasonable assumptions, quantum states are easier to create and manipulate if they only have real elements. This gives an operational meaning to the resource theory of imaginarity. We identify and answer several important questions, which include the state-conversion problem for all qubit states and all pure states of any dimension and the approximate imaginarity distillation for all quantum states. As an application, we show that imaginarity plays a crucial role in state discrimination, that is, there exist real quantum states that can be perfectly distinguished via local operations and classical communication but that cannot be distinguished with any nonzero probability if one of the parties has no access to imaginarity. We confirm this phenomenon experimentally with linear optics, discriminating different two-photon quantum states by local projective measurements. Our results prove that complex numbers are an indispensable part of quantum mechanics.

Complex numbers are widely used in both classical and quantum physics and are indispensable components for describing quantum systems and their dynamical behavior. Recently, the resource theory of imaginarity has been introduced, allowing for a systematic study of complex numbers in quantum mechanics and quantum information theory. In this work we develop theoretical methods for the resource theory of imaginarity, motivated by recent progress within theories of entanglement and coherence. We investigate imaginarity quantification, focusing on the geometric imaginarity and the robustness of imaginarity, and apply these tools to the state conversion problem in imaginarity theory. Moreover, we analyze the complexity of real and general operations in optical experiments, focusing on the number of unfixed wave plates for their implementation. We also discuss the role of imaginarity for local state discrimination, proving that any pair of real orthogonal pure states can be discriminated via local real operations and classical communication. Our study reveals the significance of complex numbers in quantum physics and proves that imaginarity is a resource in optical experiments.

In order to engineer an open quantum system and its evolution, it is essential to identify and control the memory effects. These are formally attributed to the non-Markovianity of dynamics that manifests itself by the evolution being indivisible in time, a property which can be witnessed by a nonmonotonic behavior of contractive functions or correlation measures. We show that by monitoring directly the entanglement behavior of a system in a tripartite setting it is possible to witness all invertible non-Markovian dynamics, as well as all (also noninvertible) qubit evolutions. This is achieved by using negativity, a computable measure of
entanglement, which in the usual bipartite setting is not a universal non-Markovianity witness. We emphasize further the importance of multipartite states by showing that non-Markovianity cannot be faithfully witnessed by any contractive function of single qubits. We support our statements by an explicit example of eternally non-Markovian qubit dynamics, for which negativity can witness non-Markovianity at arbitrary timescales.

Quantum entanglement and coherence are two fundamental features of nature, arising from the superposition principle of quantum mechanics. While considered as puzzling phenomena in the early days of quantum theory, it is only very recently that entanglement and coherence have been recognized as resources for the emerging
quantum technologies, including quantum Metrology, quantum communication, and quantum computing. In this work we study the limitations for the interconversion between coherence and entanglement. We prove a fundamental no-go theorem, stating that a general resource theory of superposition does not allow for
entanglement activation. By constructing a quantum controlled- NOT gate as a free operation, we experimentally show that such activation is possible within the more constrained framework of quantum coherence. By using recent results from coherence theory, we further show that the trace norm entanglement is not a strong entanglement monotone.

Quantum coherence is an essential feature of quantum mechanics which is responsible for the departure
between the classical and quantum world. The recently established resource theory of quantum coherence
studies possible quantum technological applications of quantum coherence, and limitations that arise if one
is lacking the ability to establish superpositions. An important open problem in this context is a simple
characterization for incoherent operations, constituted by all possible transformations allowed within the
resource theory of coherence. In this Letter, we contribute to such a characterization by proving several upper bounds on the maximum number of incoherent Kraus operators in a general incoherent operation. For a single qubit, we show that the number of incoherent Kraus operators is not more than 5, and it remains an open question if this number can be reduced to 4. The presented results are also relevant for quantum thermodynamics, as we demonstrate by introducing the class of Gibbs-preserving strictly incoherent operations, and solving the corresponding mixed-state conversion problem for a single qubit.

The search for a simple description of fundamental physical processes is an important part of quantum
theory. One example for such an abstraction can be found in the distance lab paradigm: if two separated
parties are connected via a classical channel, it is notoriously difficult to characterize all possible operations these parties can perform. This class of operations is widely known as local operations and classical communication. Surprisingly, the situation becomes comparably simple if the more general class of
separable operations is considered, a finding that has been extensively used in quantum information theory
for many years. Here, we propose a related approach for the resource theory of quantum coherence, where
two distant parties can perform only measurements that do not create coherence and can communicate their outcomes via a classical channel. We call this class local incoherent operations and classical communication. While the characterization of this class is also difficult in general, we show that the larger
class of separable incoherent operations has a simple mathematical form, yet still preserves the main
features of local incoherent operations and classical communication. We demonstrate the relevance of our
approach by applying it to three different tasks: assisted coherence distillation, quantum teleportation, and single-shot quantum state merging. We expect that the results we obtain in this work also transfer to other concepts of coherence that are discussed in recent literature. The approach we present here opens new ways to study the resource theory of coherence in distributed scenarios.

Understanding the resource consumption in distributed scenarios is one of the main goals of quantum information theory. A prominent example for such a scenario is the task of quantum state merging, where two parties aim to merge their tripartite quantum state parts. In standard quantum state merging, entanglement is considered to be an expensive resource, while local quantum operations can be performed at no additional cost. However, recent developments show that some local operations could be more expensive than others: it is reasonable to distinguish between local incoherent operations and local operations which can create coherence. This idea leads us to the task of incoherent quantum state merging, where one of the parties has free access to local incoherent operations only. In this case the resources of the process are quantified by pairs of entanglement and coherence. Here, we develop tools for studying this process and apply them to several relevant scenarios. While quantum state merging can lead to a gain of entanglement, our results imply that no merging procedure can gain entanglement and coherence at the same time. We also provide a general lower bound on the entanglement-coherence sum and show that the bound is tight for all pure states. Our results also lead to an incoherent version of Schumacher compression: in this case the compression rate is equal to the von Neumann entropy of the diagonal elements of the corresponding quantum state.

We introduce and study the task of assisted coherence distillation. This task arises naturally in bipartite systems where both parties work together to generate the maximal possible coherence on one of the subsystems. Only incoherent operations are allowed on the target system, while general local quantum operations are permitted on the other; this is an operational paradigm that we call local quantum-incoherent operations and classical communication. We show that the asymptotic rate of assisted coherence distillation for pure states is equal to the coherence of assistance, an analog of the entanglement of assistance, whose properties we characterize. Our findings imply a novel interpretation of the von Neumann entropy: it quantifies the maximum amount of extra quantum coherence a system can gain when receiving assistance from a collaborative party. Our results are generalized to coherence localization in a multipartite setting and possible applications are discussed