Frozen condition of quantum coherence

Abstract Quantum coherence as an important physical resource plays the key role in implementing various quantum tasks, whereas quantum coherence is generally nonincreasing under incoherent operations. In this paper, we analyse under which dynamical conditions the l 1 -norm or the relative entropy of coherence can remain unchanged under strictly incoherent operations (freezing coherence). We provide a detailed analysis of their structure together with exact geometric conditions of freezing coherence. It reveals a remarkable feature: any strictly incoherent operation freezing coherence can be decomposed as a convex combination of unitary operations. This partially answers an open question named unitary decomposition of doubly-stochastic quantum operations [M. A. Nielsen and I. L. Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000)]. Based on this analysis, we also give a complete classification of coherent states from operational coherence theory. This builds the counterpart of entanglement classification under LOCC.