Is coherence catalytic?

Abstract

Quantum coherence, the ability to control the phases in superposition states is a resource, and it is of crucial importance, therefore, to understand how it is consumed in use. It has been suggested that catalytic coherence is possible, that is repeated use of the coherence without degradation or reduction in performance. The claim has particular relevance for quantum thermodynamics because, were it true, it would allow free energy that is locked in coherence to be extracted $\text{indefinitely}$. We address this issue directly with a careful analysis of the proposal by $\mathring{A}$berg. We find that coherence $\text{cannot}$ be used catalytically, or even repeatedly without limit.

23 pages with 2 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Reference frames, superselection rules, and quantum information
• Entanglement constrained by superselection rules
• Degradation of a quantum reference frame
• Degradation of a quantum directional reference frame as a random walk

Cited by in corpus (22)

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• A no-broadcasting theorem for quantum asymmetry and coherence and a trade-off relation for approximate broadcasting
• Catalytic Transformations of Pure Entangled States
• Catalysis of entanglement and other quantum resources
• Autonomous thermal machine for amplification and control of energetic coherence
• Apparent temperature: demystifying the relation between quantum coherence, correlations, and heat flows
• Operational definition of the temperature of a quantum state
• Quantum superposition of thermodynamic evolutions with opposing time's arrows
• Collective operations can extremely reduce work fluctuations
• Fundamental limits on anomalous energy flows in correlated quantum systems
• One-shot Coherence Distillation with Catalysts
• Amplifying asymmetry with correlated catalysts
• Correlations enable lossless ergotropy transport
• Second law of thermodynamics for batteries with vacuum state
• Covariant catalysis requires correlations and good quantum reference frames degrade little
• Entanglement catalysis for quantum states and noisy channels
• Quantum catalysis in cavity quantum electrodynamics
• Catalytic transformations for thermal operations
• Broadcasting single-qubit and multi-qubit-entangled states: authentication, cryptography, and distributed quantum computation
• Faithful extraction of quantum coherence
• Catalytic Activation of Bell Nonlocality
• Finite-size catalysis in quantum resource theories