Geometric coherence and quantum state discrimination

Abstract

The operational meaning of coherence measure lies at the very heart of the coherence theory. In this paper, we provide an operational interpretation for geometric coherence, by proving that the geometric coherence of a quantum state is equal to the minimum error probability to discriminate a set of pure states with von Neumann measurement. On the other hand, we also show that a task to ambiguously discriminate a set of linearly independent pure states can be regarded as a problem of calculating geometric coherence. That is, we reveal an equivalence relation between ambiguous quantum state discrimination and geometric coherence. Based on this equivalence, moreover, we improve the upper bound for geometric coherence and give the explicit expression of geometric coherence for a class of states. Besides, we establish a complementarity relation of geometric coherence and path distinguishability, with which the relationship between l1-norm of coherence and geometric coherence is obtained. Finally, with geometric coherence, we study multiple copies of quantum state discrimination and give an example to show how to discriminate two pure states.