Unspeakable Coherence Concentration

TL;DR

This paper investigates the limits of increasing quantum coherence in multi-qubit systems using coherence non-increasing unitaries, revealing bound coherence and unbounded amplification possibilities, with implications for quantum advantage tasks.

Contribution

It provides a complete solution for qubit coherence enhancement, identifies bound coherence, and establishes fundamental bounds and no-go theorems for multi-qubit systems.

Findings

Optimal unitaries for qubit coherence increase identified

Existence of bound coherence demonstrated

Unbounded coherence amplification possible in certain states

Abstract

Unspeakable coherence is a key feature separating quantum and classical physics. Modelled as asymmetry with respect to a continuous transformation generated by a physically relevant observable, such as the Hamiltonian or angular moment, unspeakable coherence has been shown to be the relevant notion of coherence for achieving quantum advantage in the tasks of metrology, reference frame alignment and work extraction, among others. A question of both practical and foundational value is: Given some copies of a state with low coherence, can we prepare a more coherent state via coherence non-increasing operations? Here, we study this question in the minimal limiting case: Given two uncorrelated copies of a coherent state, can one, via globally coherence non-increasing unitaries, increase the coherence in a subsystem? We fully solve this problem for qubits, identifying the optimal unitaries and revealing the existence of bound coherence. This is then used to create a completely constructive multi-qubit coherence enhancement protocol, where only effective-qubit unitaries are used. Unexpectedly, in this protocol, we show that there exists states for which the ratio of the input-output coherence can be amplified unboundedly. Extending beyond qubits, we derive two fundamental upper bounds on the amount of local coherence that can be increased and prove a no-go theorem showing that certain global correlations cannot be converted to local coherence.