We build in this paper the counterpart of the celebrated Nielsen theorem for coherence manipulation. This offers an affirmative answer to the open question: whether, given two states $\rho$ and $\sigma$, either $\rho$ can be transformed into $\sigma$ or vice versa under incoherent operations [Baumgratz et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 140401 (2014)]. As a consequence, we find that there exist essentially different types of coherence. Moreover, incoherent operations can be enhanced in the presence of certain coherent states. These extra states are coherent catalysts: they allow uncertain incoherent operations to be realized without being consumed in any way. Our main result also sheds light on the construction of coherence measures.

We provide a fine-grained definition for monogamous measure of entanglement that does not invoke any particular monogamy relation. Our definition is given in terms an equality, as oppose to inequality, that we call the "disentangling condition". We relate our definition to the more traditional one, by showing that it generates standard monogamy relations. We then show that all quantum Markov states satisfy the disentangling condition for any entanglement monotone. In addition, we demonstrate that entanglement monotones that are given in terms of a convex roof extension are monogamous if they are monogamous on pure states, and show that for any quantum state that satisfies the disentangling condition, its entanglement of formation equals the entanglement of assistance. We characterize all bipartite mixed states with this property, and use it to show that the G-concurrence is monogamous. In the case of two qubits, we show that the equality between entanglement of formation and assistance holds if and only if the state is a rank 2 bipartite state that can be expressed as the marginal of a pure 3-qubit state in the W class.

Although many different entanglement measures have been proposed so far, much less is known in the multipartite case, which leads to the previous monogamy relations in the literature being not complete. We establish here a strict framework for defining the multipartite entanglement measure (MEM): apart from the postulates of the bipartite measure, i.e., vanishing on separable measures and nonincreasing under local operations and classical communication, a complete MEM should additionally satisfy the unification condition and the hierarchy condition. We then come up with a complete monogamy formula for the unified MEM (an MEM is called a unified MEM if it satisfies the unification condition) and a tightly complete monogamy relation for the complete MEM (an MEM is called a complete MEM if it satisfies both the unification condition and the hierarchy condition). Consequently, we propose MEMs which are multipartite extensions of entanglement of formation (EoF), concurrence, tangle, Tsallis $q$ entropy of entanglement, Rényi $\alpha$ entropy of entanglement, the convex-roof extension of negativity, and negativity. We show that (i) the extensions of EoF, concurrence, tangle, and Tsallis $q$ entropy of entanglement are complete MEMs; (ii) multipartite extensions of Rényi $\alpha$ entropy of entanglement, negativity, and the convex-roof extension of negativity are unified MEMs but not complete MEMs; and (iii) all these multipartite extensions are completely monogamous, and the ones which are defined by the convex-roof structure (except for the Rényi $\alpha$ entropy of entanglement and the convex-roof extension of negativity) are not only completely monogamous but also tightly completely monogamous. In addition, as a byproduct, we find a class of states that satisfy the additivity of EoF. We also find a class of tripartite states one part of which can be maximally entangled with the other two parts simultaneously according to the definition of mixed maximally entangled state (MMES) in Li et al. [Z. Li, M. Zhao, S. Fei, H. Fan, and W. Liu, Quantum Inf. Comput. 12, 0063 (2012)]. Consequently, we improve the definition of maximally entangled state (MES) and prove that the only MES is the pure MES.

Quantifying genuine entanglement is a crucial task in quantum information theory. In this work, we give an approach of constituting genuine m -partite entanglement measures from any bipartite entanglement and any k -partite entanglement measure, 3 ⩽ k < m . In addition, as a complement to the three-qubit concurrence triangle proposed in ( Phys. Rev. Lett. 127 040403), we show that the triangle relation is also valid for any continuous entanglement measure and system with any dimension. We also discuss the tetrahedron structure for the four-partite system via the triangle relation associated with tripartite and bipartite entanglement respectively. For multipartite system that contains more than four parties, there is no symmetric geometric structure as that of tri- and four-partite cases.

We show that any measure of entanglement that on pure bipartite states is given by a strictly concave function of the reduced density matrix is monogamous on pure tripartite states. This includes the important class of bipartite measures of entanglement that reduce to the (von Neumann) entropy of entanglement. Moreover, we show that the convex roof extension of such measures (e.g., entanglement of formation) is monogamous also on mixed tripartite states. To prove our results, we use the definition of monogamy without inequalities recently put forward [Gour and Guo, Quantum 2, 81 (2018)]. Our results promote the concept that monogamy of entanglement is a property of quantum entanglement and not an attribute of some particular measures of entanglement.

Quantum discord has been studied extensively as a measure of nonclassical correlations which includes entanglement as a subset. Although it is well known that nonzero discord can exist without entanglement, the origin of quantum discord is not well understood as compared to entanglement, which manifests itself more simply as inseparable higher-dimensional quantum superposition. In this paper we establish the discordlike correlation of bipartite coherence and then compare it to quantum discord. Consequently, we show that the minimum of the discordlike correlation of coherence coincides with the original quantum discord. This demonstrates quantum discord as the irreducible correlated bipartite coherence. In addition, the discordlike correlated coherence is shown to admit the postulates of the quantum resource theory (QRT), although the original quantum discord is not a “good” candidate under the QRT. We also find that the relative entropy measure induced from the discordlike coherence is a well-defined coherence measure for bipartite states.