Wave-particle duality employing quantum coherence in superposition with non-orthogonal pointers (1705.04343v4)

Abstract: We propose the notion of quantum coherence for superpositions over states which are not necessarily mutually orthogonal. This anticipatedly leads to a resource theory of non-orthogonal coherence. We characterize free states and free operations in this theory, and connect the latter with free operations in the resource theory of quantum coherence for orthogonal bases. We show that the concept of non-orthogonal coherence naturally furnishes us with a wave-particle duality in quantum double-slit experiments where the channels beyond the slits are leaky between them. Furthermore, we demonstrate existence of a unique maximally coherent qubit state corresponding to any given purity. In addition, and in contradistinction with the case of orthogonal bases, there appears a non-trivial minimally coherent qubit state for a given purity. We also study the behavior of quantum coherence for some typical configurations of non-orthogonal bases which have no analogs for orthogonal bases. We further investigate the problem of determining the energy cost of creating non-orthogonal coherence, and find that it scales linearly with the non-orthogonal coherence created.