We establish the nonclassicality of continuous-variable states as a resource for quantum metrology. Based on the quantum Fisher information of multimode quadratures, we introduce the metrological power as a measure of nonclassicality with a concrete operational meaning of displacement sensitivity beyond the classical limit. This measure belongs to the resource theory of nonclassicality, which is nonincreasing under linear optical elements. Our Letter reveals that a single copy, highly nonclassical quantum state is intrinsically advantageous when compared to multiple copies of a quantum state with moderate nonclassicality. This suggests that metrological power is related to the degree of quantum macroscopicity. Finally, we demonstrate that metrological resources useful for nonclassical displacement sensing tasks can be always converted into a useful resource state for phase sensitivity beyond the classical limit.

In this paper, we argue that quantum coherence in a bipartite system can be contained either locally or in the correlations between the subsystems. The portion of quantum coherence contained within correlations can be viewed as a kind of quantum correlation which we call correlated coherence. We demonstrate that the framework provided by correlated coherence allows us to retrieve the same concepts of quantum correlations as defined by the asymmetric and symmetric versions of quantum discord as well as quantum entanglement, providing a unified view of these correlations. We also prove that correlated coherence can be formulated as an entanglement monotone, thus demonstrating that entanglement may be viewed as a specialized form of coherence.

We propose a scheme to realize deterministic quantum teleportation using linear optics and hybrid qubits. It enables one to efficiently perform teleportation and universal linear-optical gate operations in a simple and near-deterministic manner using all-optical hybrid entanglement as off-line resources. Our analysis shows that our approach outperforms previous ones when considering both the resource requirements and fault-tolerance limits.

Based on phase-space structures of quantum states, we propose a novel measure to quantify macroscopic quantum superpositions. Our measure simultaneously quantifies two different kinds of essential information for a given quantum state in a harmonious manner: the degree of quantum coherence and the effective size of the physical system that involves the superposition. It enjoys remarkably good analytical and algebraic properties. It turns out to be the most general and inclusive measure ever proposed that it can be applied to any types of multipartite states and mixed states represented in phase space.

We investigate the phase enhancement of quantum states subject to nonlinear phase shifts. The optimal phase estimation of even entangled coherent states (ECSs) is shown to be better than that of NOON states with the same average particle number $\langle n\rangle$ and nonlinearity exponent $k$. We investigate the creation of an approximate entangled coherent state (AECS) from a photon-subtracted squeezed vacuum with current optical technology methods and show that a pure AECS is even better than an even ECS for large $\langle n\rangle$. Finally, we examine the simple, but physically relevant, cases of loss in the nonlinear interferometer for a fixed average photon number $\langle n\rangle$. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.86.043828 ©2012 American Physical Society