Quantum coherence

Abstract

Quantum coherence is not only a fundamental concept of quantum mechanics, but also an important physical resource for quantum information processing. Along with the formulation of the resource theoretic framework of quantum coherence, the quantification of coherence is still one of the recent research focuses. Quantum coherence is also very fragile, and the environmental noise usually induces a system to decohere. Hence it is also an important subject to make clear the dynamical behavior and to seek a flexible way of preserving quantum coherence of an open quantum system. Besides, there are many potential applications of quantum coherence in quantum many-body system, quantum thermodynamics, quantum biology and other related fields. We review in this paper the resource theoretic framework for quantifying coherence and the relevant quantum coherence measures defined within this framework which includes the relative entropy of coherence, the <i>l</i>₁ norm of coherence, the entanglement-based measure of coherence, the convex roof measure of coherence, and the robustness of coherence. We also review the dynamical behaviors of quantum coherence for certain open quantum systems, the coherence generating and breaking power of typical quantum channels, and the freezing phenomenon of quantum coherence. Moreover, we exemplify applications of quantum coherence in Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm, Grover search algorithms, and the study of quantum phase transitions in multipartite systems. We hope that these results may provide not only an overview of the relevant field, but also an outlook of the future research direction of this exciting field.