We introduce a new discrete coherence monotone named the coherence number, which is a generalization of the coherence rank to mixed states. After defining the coherence number in a similar manner to the Schmidt number in entanglement theory, we present a necessary and sufficient condition of the coherence number for a coherent state to be converted to an entangled state of nonzero k-concurrence (a member of the generalized concurrence family with 2 ≤ k ≤ d). It also turns out that the coherence number is a useful measure to understand the process of Grover search algorithm of N items. We show that the coherence number remains N and falls abruptly when the success probability of the searching process becomes maximal. This phenomenon motivates us to analyze the depletion pattern of C (N ) c (the last member of the generalized coherence concurrence, nonzero when the coherence number is N ), which turns out to be an optimal resource for the process since it is completely consumed to finish the searching task.

We propose a new family of coherence monotones, named the generalized coherence concurrence (or coherence k-concurrence), which is an analogous concept to the generalized entanglement concurrence. The coherence k-concurrence of a state is nonzero if and only if the coherence number (a recently introduced discrete coherence monotone) of the state is not smaller than k, and a state can be converted to a state with nonzero entanglement k-concurrence via incoherent operations if and only if the state has nonzero coherence k-concurrence. We apply the coherence concurrence family to the problem of wave-particle duality in multi-path interference phenomena. We obtain a sharper equation for path distinguishability (which witness the duality) than the known value and show that the amount of each concurrence for the quanton state determines the number of slits which are identified unambiguously.

A fundamental question in linear optical quantum computing is to understand the origin of the quantum supremacy in the physical system. It is found that the multimode linear optical transition amplitudes are calculated through the permanents of transition operator matrices, which is a hard problem for classical simulations (boson sampling problem). We can understand this problem by considering a quantum measure that directly determines the runtime for computing the transition amplitudes. In this paper, we suggest a quantum measure named “Fock state concurrence sum” CS, which is the summation over all the members of “the generalized Fock state concurrence” (a measure analogous to the generalized concurrences of entanglement and coherence). By introducing generalized algorithms for computing the transition amplitudes of the Fock state boson sampling with an arbitrary number of photons per mode, we show that the minimal classical runtime for all the known algorithms directly depends on CS. Therefore, we can state that the Fock state concurrence sum CSbehaves as a collective measure that controls the computational complexity of Fock state BS. We expect that our observation on the role of the Fock state concurrence in the generalized algorithm for permanents would provide a unified viewpoint to interpret the quantum computing power of linear optics.

We suggest a formalism to illustrate the entanglement of identical particles in the first quantization language (1QL). Our 1QL formalism enables one to exploit all the well-established quantum information tools to understand the indistinguishable ones, including the reduced density matrix and familiar entanglement measures. The rigorous quantitative relation between the amount of entanglement and the spatial coherence of particles is possible in this formalism. Our entanglement detection process is a generalization of the entanglement extraction protocol for identical particles with mode splitting proposed by Killoran et al. (2014).

Particle identity and entanglement are two fundamental quantum properties that work as major resources for various quantum information tasks. However, it is still a challenging problem to understand the correlation of the two properties in the same system. While recent theoretical studies have shown that the spatial overlap between identical particles is necessary for nontrivial entanglement, the exact role of particle indistinguishability in the entanglement of identical particles has never been analyzed quantitatively before. Here, we theoretically and experimentally investigate the behavior of entanglement between two bosons as spatial overlap and indistinguishability simultaneously vary. The theoretical computation of entanglement for generic two bosons with pseudospins is verified experimentally in a photonic system. Our results show that the amount of entanglement is a monotonically increasing function of both quantities. We expect that our work provides an insight into deciphering the role of the entanglement in quantum networks that consist of identical particles.