Coherence as a resource in decision problems: The Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm and a variation

Abstract: That superpositions of states can be useful for performing tasks in quantum systems has been known since the early days of quantum information, but only recently has quantitative theory of quantum coherence been proposed. Here we apply that theory to an analysis of the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm, which depends on quantum coherence for its operation. The Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm solves a decision problem, and we focus on a probabilistic version of that problem, comparing probability of being correct for both classical and quantum procedures. In addition, we study a related decision problem in which the quantum procedure has one-sided error while the classical procedure has two-sided error. The role of coherence on the quantum success probabilities in both of these problems is examined.