Accessible coherence in open quantum system dynamics

Abstract

Quantum coherence generated in a physical process can only be cast as a potentially useful resource if its effects can be detected at a later time. Recently, the notion of non-coherence-generating-and-detecting (NCGD) dynamics has been introduced and related to the classicality of the statistics associated with sequential measurements at different times. However, in order for a dynamics to be NCGD, its propagators need to satisfy a given set of conditions for all triples of consecutive times. We reduce this to a finite set of d(d - 1) conditions, where d is the dimension of the quantum system, provided that the generator is time-independent. Further conditions are derived for the more general time-dependent case. The application of this result to the case of a qubit dynamics allows us to elucidate which kind of noise gives rise to non-coherence-generation-and-detection.