State Convertibility under Genuinely Incoherent Operations

Abstract State convertibility is fundamental in the study of resource theory of quantum coherence. It is aimed at identifying when it is possible to convert a given coherent state to another using only incoherent operations. In this paper, we give a complete characterization of state convertibility under genuinely incoherent operations. It is found that convexity of the robustness of coherence plays a central role. Based on this, the majorization condition of determining convertibility from pure states to mixed states under strictly incoherent operations is provided. Moreover, maximally coherent states in the set of all states with fixed diagonal elements are determined. It is somewhat surprising that convexity of the robustness of coherence can also decide conversion between off-diagonal parts of coherent states. This might be a big step to answer completely the question of state convertibility for mixed states under incoherent operations.