Quantifying the resources available to a quantum computer appears to be necessary to separate quantum from classical computation. Among them, entanglement, nonstabilizerness, and coherence are arguably of great significance. We introduce “path coherence” as a measure of the coherent path interferences arising in a quantum computation. Leveraging the sum-over-paths formalism, we obtain a classical algorithm for estimating quantum transition amplitudes, the complexity of which scales with path coherence. As path coherence relates to the hardness of classical estimation of quantum transition amplitudes, it provides a new perspective on the role of coherence in quantum computational advantage. Beyond their fundamental significance, our results have practical applications for simulating large classes of quantum computations with classical computers.

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• Quantum algorithms & computation
• Quantum circuits
• Quantum computation