Nature Communications (Jan 2020)

Coherence distillation machines are impossible in quantum thermodynamics

  • Iman Marvian

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13846-3
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

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Can an idealised machine obtain pure coherent quantum states from mixed ones at a non-zero rate, or equivalently, can a machine distill synchronized quantum clocks starting from noisy ones? Iman Marvian demonstrates that this is impossible, even if the machine is allowed to spend an arbitrary amount of work.