Quantum asymmetry and noisy multi-mode interferometry
arXiv:2107.11057 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.240504
Abstract
Quantum asymmetry is a physical resource which coincides with the amount of coherence between the eigenspaces of a generator responsible for phase encoding in interferometric experiments. We highlight an apparently counter-intuitive behavior that the asymmetry may \emph{increase} as a result of a \emph{decrease} of coherence inside a degenerate subspace. We intuitively explain and illustrate the phenomena by performing a three-mode single-photon interferometric experiment, where one arm carries the signal and two noisy reference arms have fluctuating phases. We show that the source of the observed sensitivity improvement is the reduction of correlations between these fluctuations and comment on the impact of the effect when moving from the single-photon quantum level to the classical regime. Finally, we also establish the analogy of the effect in the case of entanglement resource theory.
v1: 6+4 pages, 3+5 figures, comments welcome! v2: 6+6 pages, 3+7 figures, streamlined presentation, expanded supplemental material, close to published version
References in corpus (13)
- Reference frames, superselection rules, and quantum information
- Description of quantum coherence in thermodynamic processes requires constraints beyond free energy
- Quantum coherence, time-translation symmetry and thermodynamics
- The resource theory of quantum reference frames: manipulations and monotones
- Extending Noether's theorem by quantifying the asymmetry of quantum states
- Measuring the quality of a quantum reference frame: the relative entropy of frameness
- Quantifying Superposition
- Quantum Metrological Limits via a Variational Approach
- Optical interferometry in the presence of large phase diffusion
- Does nonlinear metrology offer improved resolution? Answers from quantum information theory
- Experimental progress on quantum coherence: detection, quantification, and manipulation
- Coherence of operations and interferometry
- Noise limits on two-photon interferometric sensing