PHYSICAL REVIEW A 100, 012349 (2019)
Operator coherence dynamics in Grover’s quantum search algorithm
Minghua Pan
1,2,3,4,*
and Daowen Qiu
1,3,5,†
1
Institute of Computer Science Theory, School of Data and Computer Science, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China
2
School of Electronics and Information Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China
3
The Guangdong Key Laboratory of Information Security Technology, Sun Yat-sen University, 510006, China
4
School of Computer Science and Information Security, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin 541004, China
5
Instituto de Telecomunicações, Departamento de Matemática, Instituto Superior Técnico, Av. Rovisco Pais 1049-001, Lisbon, Portugal
(Received 8 December 2018; published 31 July 2019)
Coherence is one of the most basic concepts and resources in quantum information. To clear the role coherence
plays on the essential operator level in Grover’s search algorithm, here we discuss the coherence dynamics of
the state after each basic operator is applyied. As it is known, Grover’s search algorithm repeats the application
of Grover operator G, which can be decomposed into G = H
⊗n
PH
⊗n
O,whereH is Hadamard operator, P is
the condition phase-shift operator, and O is the oracle operator. First, we show that O and P are incoherent
operators while H
⊗n
is coherent. Second, we prove that the amount of the operator coherence of the first H
⊗n
and the operator coherence produced or depleted by H
⊗n
depends not only on the size of the database and the
success probability, but also on target states. Moreover, the amount of operator coherence is larger when the
superposition state of targets is entangled rather than product. Third, we show that the two H
⊗n
have different
effects on coherence that one produces coherence and the other depletes coherence, and the depletion plays a
major role. Therefore, the coherence is vibrating during the search process and the overall effect is that coherence
is in depletion.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.100.012349
I. INTRODUCTION
Coherence, as one of the essential quantum properties
which derived from the superposition principle of quantum
states, plays an important role in quantum physics [1,2] and
quantum information [3–5]. Coherence not only exists in bi-
partite and multipartite systems, but also exists in a single sys-
tem. However, a rigorous framework for quantifying coher-
ence was proposed by Baumgratz et al. recently [6]. From the
viewpoint of the resource theory, the authors established the
quantitative theory of coherence following the approach that
has been established for entanglement [7–9]. Following their
footsteps, the characterization and quantification of coherence
aroused a great deal of interest [10–15]. It is worth noting that
coherence can be converted to other quantum resources, such
as entanglement and discord, by suitable operations [16–19].
Egloff et al. [20] unified entanglement, discord, and coherence
as different aspects of a single underlying resource theory.
The role of coherence in quantum algorithms has attracted
people’s attention [21–27]. For the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm,
Hillery showed that coherence can be viewed as a resource
in the sense that a bigger amount of coherence decreases
the failure of this algorithm [21]. In deterministic quantum
computation with one qubit (DQC1), Matera et al. [22]dis-
played that the precision is directly related to the recoverable
coherence.
*
panmhwz@qq.com
†
Corresponding author: issqdw@mail.sysu.edu.cn
Grover’s search algorithm (GSA) [28], as one of the fa-
mous quantum algorithms, was introduced to speed up the
search process which is a quadratic improvement over its
classical one [29]. To achieve the speedup, it was proven that
multipartite entanglement is necessary for GSA operating on
pure state [30]. Therefore, a great deal of research works have
been done to investigate the properties of entanglement in
GSA [31–36]. These works showed that entanglement plays
an important role in GSA and relates to the success proba-
bility. As an important quantum resource, coherence in GSA
has been investigated [24–26]. Anand and Pati [24] studied
the relation between coherence and success probability in
the analog GSA, which was based on adiabatic Hamiltonian
evolution. They found that the success probability of the
algorithm is related to the amount of coherence. Shi et al.
[25] investigated the role of quantum coherence dynamics
in GSA. They showed that the behavior about the quantum
coherence depletion enhances the success probability. Refer-
ence [26] introduced a discrete coherence monotone named
the coherence number and showed the similar conclusion that
the enhancement of success probability consumes coherence
as iteration number increases. These works discussed the
coherence of the state after each iteration of G in GSA.
GSA repeats the application of Grover iteration G which
consists of G = H
⊗n
PH
⊗n
O, where H is Hadamard operator,
P is the condition phase-shift operator, and O is the oracle
operator. To investigate how these operators contribute to
coherence and the relationship among them and the success
probability, in this paper, we would investigate the coherence
dynamics of each basic operator in GSA. We show that O
and P are incoherent operators while two H
⊗n
are coherent
2469-9926/2019/100(1)/012349(10) 012349-1 ©2019 American Physical Society