Environment-induced quantum coherence spreading of a qubit

Abstract

We make a thorough study of the spreading of quantum coherence (QC), as quantified by the l1-norm QC, when a qubit (a two-level quantum system) is subjected to noise quantum channels commonly appearing in quantum information science. We notice that QC is generally not conserved and that even incoherent initial states can lead to transitory system–environment QC. We show that for the amplitude damping channel the evolved total QC can be written as the sum of local and non-local parts, with the last one being equal to entanglement. On the other hand, for the phase damping channel (PDC) entanglement does not account for all non-local QC, with the gap between them depending on time and also on the qubit’s initial state. Besides these issues, the possibility and conditions for time invariance of QC are regarded in the case of bit, phase, and bit–phase flip channels. Here we reveal the qualitative dynamical inequivalence between these channels and the PDC and show that the creation of system–environment entanglement does not necessarily imply the destruction of the qubit’s QC. We also investigate the resources needed for non-local QC creation, showing that while the PDC requires initial coherence of the qubit, for some other channels non-zero population of the excited state (i.e., energy) is sufficient. Related to that, considering the depolarizing channel we notice the qubit’s ability to act as a catalyst for the creation of joint QC and entanglement, without need for nonzero initial QC or excited state population.