Quantifying the coherence of operations and applications - Thomas Theurer

Protocols and devices that exploit quantum mechanical effects can outperform their classical counterparts in certain tasks ranging from communication and computation to sensing. Intuitively speaking, the reason for this is that different physical laws allow for different technological applications. Therefore, the question where quantum mechanics differs from classical physics is not only of foundational or philosophical interest but might have technological implications too. To address it in a systematic manner, so-called quantum resource theories were developed. These are mathematical frameworks that emerge from (physically motivated) restrictions that are put on top of the laws of quantum mechanics and single out specific aspects of quantum theory as resources. In this talk, I will explain how to quantify the coherence of operations and present some recent results where this theoretical work was both applied to an actual experiment as well as interferometry.