Experimental Direct Measurement of the Relative Entropy of Coherence

Quantum coherence is the most distinguished feature of quantum mechanics, which characterizes the superposition properties of quantum states. It plays a critical role in various fields, ranging from quantum information technology to quantum biology. Although various coherence quantifiers have been proposed since the resource theory of coherence was established, there are a lack of experimental methods to estimate them efficiently, which restricts the applications of coherence. Relative entropy of coherence is one of the main quantifiers of coherence, and is frequently used in quantum information science. Such nonlinear properties of quantum states are usually calculated from full descriptions of the quantum state, although they are not related to all parameters that specify the state. Here, we experimentally measure the relative entropy of coherence for the arbitrary qubit states directly in the photonic system without using standard state tomography. In the experiment, we directly measure the von Neumann entropy of the quantum states through interference, thus obtaining the relative entropy of coherence, and finding that the experimental results are in good agreement with the theory. Our work provides a nice alternative experimental scheme for measuring the relative entropy of coherence.