coherence

Also co·her·en·cy

[koh-heer-uhns, -her-]

noun

1. the act or state of cohering; cohesion.

2. logical interconnection; overall sense or understandability.

3. congruity; consistency.

   Synonyms: rationality, agreement, harmony, correspondence

4. Physics, Optics.,  (of waves) the state of being coherent.

5. Linguistics.,  the property of unity in a written text or a segment of spoken discourse that stems from the links among its underlying ideas and from the logical organization and development of its thematic content.

coherence

/ kəʊˈhɪərənsɪ, kəʊˈhɪərəns /

noun

1. logical or natural connection or consistency

2. another word for cohesion

coherence

1. A property holding for two or more waves or fields when each individual wave or field is in phase with every other one. Lasers, for example, emit almost perfectly coherent light; all the photons emitted by a laser have the same frequency and are in phase. Since quantum states can be described by a wave equation, coherence can hold for quantum states in general, though only among bosons. Coherence is generally possible in physical systems that may undergo superposition. Maintaining coherence of light is important in fiber optic communications.

2. See also Bose-Einstein condensate

Other Word Forms

• noncoherence noun
• noncoherency noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of coherence¹

First recorded in 1570–80; coher(ent) + -ence

Example Sentences

“You now have to write with an explicit intention and give everything coherence, as if life is a series of very coherent interconnections,” Díaz says.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

In a Nov. 5 article published in Nature, the Princeton team reported that their qubit maintains coherence for more than 1 millisecond.

Read more on Science Daily

The greater the coherence time of those entangled atoms, the farther apart the connected quantum computers can be.

Read more on Science Daily

Long years went by under this cloud, but as the U.S.S.R. began collapsing and the “Third World” lost whatever coherence it ever had, demands to repeal “Z/r” grew.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

I believe, though, that a solution to this coherence gap is in sight—thanks to AI.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• consistency 
• continuity 
• integrity 
• rationality 
• solidarity 
• unity