Indistinguishability-enabled coherence for quantum metrology

© 2019 American Physical Society. Quantum coherence plays a fundamental and operational role in different areas of physics. A resource theory has been developed to characterize the coherence of distinguishable particles systems. Here we show that indistinguishability of identical particles is a source of coherence, even when they are independently prepared. In particular, under spatially local operations, states that are incoherent for distinguishable particles, can be coherent for indistinguishable particles under the same procedure. We present a phase discrimination protocol, in which we demonstrate the operational advantage of using two indistinguishable particles rather than distinguishable ones. The coherence due to the quantum indistinguishability significantly reduces the error probability of guessing the phase, using the most general measurements. The role played by particle statistics in the protocol is also investigated.