Various measures have been suggested recently for quantifying the coherence of a quantum state with respect to a given basis. We first use two of these, the $l_1$-norm and relative entropy measures, to investigate tradeoffs between the coherences of mutually unbiased bases. Results include relations between coherence, uncertainty, and purity; tight general bounds restricting the coherences of mutually unbiased bases; and an exact complementarity relation for qubit coherences. We further define the average coherence of a quantum state. For the $l_1$-norm measure this is related to a natural “coherence radius” for the state and leads to a conjecture for an $l_2$-norm measure of coherence. For relative entropy the average coherence is determined by the difference between the von Neumann entropy and the quantum subentropy of the state and leads to upper bounds for the latter quantity. Finally, we point out that the relative entropy of coherence is a special case of G-asymmetry, which immediately yields several operational interpretations in contexts as diverse as frame alignment, quantum communication, and metrology, and suggests generalizing the property of quantum coherence to arbitrary groups of physical transformations.

• Received 13 August 2015

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.92.042101