Quantum metrology studies the use of entanglement and other quantum resources to improve precision measurement. An interferometer using N independent particles to measure a parameter X can achieve at best the "standard quantum limit" (SQL) of sensitivity δX \propto N^{-1/2}. The same interferometer using N entangled particles can achieve in principle the "Heisenberg limit" δX \propto N^{-1}, using exotic states. Recent theoretical work argues that interactions among particles may be a valuable resource for quantum metrology, allowing scaling beyond the Heisenberg limit. Specifically, a k-particle interaction will produce sensitivity δX \propto N^{-k} with appropriate entangled states and δX \propto N^{-(k-1/2)} even without entanglement. Here we demonstrate this "super-Heisenberg" scaling in a nonlinear, non-destructive measurement of the magnetisation of an atomic ensemble. We use fast optical nonlinearities to generate a pairwise photon-photon interaction (k = 2) while preserving quantum-noise-limited performance, to produce δX \propto N^{-3/2}. We observe super-Heisenberg scaling over two orders of magnitude in N, limited at large N by higher-order nonlinear effects, in good agreement with theory. For a measurement of limited duration, super-Heisenberg scaling allows the nonlinear measurement to overtake in sensitivity a comparable linear measurement with the same number of photons. In other scenarios, however, higher-order nonlinearities prevent this crossover from occurring, reflecting the subtle relationship of scaling to sensitivity in nonlinear systems. This work shows that inter-particle interactions can improve sensitivity in a quantum-limited measurement, and introduces a fundamentally new resource for quantum metrology.
We show that the quantum Fisher information attained in an adiabatic approach to critical quantum metrology cannot lead to the Heisenberg limit of precision and therefore regular quantum metrology under optimal settings is always superior. Furthermore, we argue that even though shortcuts to adiabaticity can arbitrarily decrease the time of preparing critical ground states, they cannot be used to achieve or overcome the Heisenberg limit for quantum parameter estimation in adiabatic critical quantum metrology. As case studies, we explore the application of counter-diabatic driving to the Landau-…
The Heisenberg limit is the superior precision available by entanglement sensors. However, entanglementis fragile against dephasing, and there is no known quantum metrology protocol that can achieve Heisenberg limited sensitivity with the presence of independent dephasing. Here, we show that the Heisenberg limit is attainable under the effect of independent dephasing under conditions where the probe qubits decohere due to both target fields and local environments. To detect the target fields, we exploit the entanglement properties to decay much faster than the classical states due to collectiv…
We propose a superradiant metrology technique to achieve the Heisenberg limit super-resolving displacement measurement by encoding multiple light momenta into a three-level atomic ensemble. We use $2N$ coherent pulses to prepare a single excitation superradiant state in a superposition of two timed Dicke states that are $4N$ light momenta apart in momentum space. The phase difference between these two states induced by a uniform displacement of the atomic ensemble has $1/4N$ sensitivity. Experiments are proposed in crystals and in ultracold atoms.
Weak-value amplification (WVA) provides a way for amplified detection of a tiny physical signal at the expense of a lower detection probability. Despite this trade-off, due to its robustness against certain types of noise, WVA has advantages over conventional measurements in precision metrology. Moreover, it has been shown that WVA-based metrology can reach the Heisenberg-limit using entangled resources, but preparing macroscopic entangled resources remains challenging. Here we demonstrate a novel WVA scheme based on iterative interactions, achieving the Heisenberg-limited precision scaling wi…
The critical quantum metrology, which exploits the quantum phase transition for high precision measurement, has gained increasing attention recently. The critical quantum metrology with the continuous quantum phase transition, however, is experimentally very challenging since the continuous quantum phase transition only exists at the thermal dynamical limit. Here, we propose an adiabatic scheme on a perturbed Ising spin model with the first order quantum phase transition. By employing the Landau-Zener anticrossing, we can not only encode the unknown parameter in the ground state but also tune …
A central feature of quantum metrology is the possibility of Heisenberg scaling, a quadratic improvement over the limits of classical statistics. This scaling, however, is notoriously fragile to noise. While for some noise types it can be restored through error correction, for other important types, such as dephasing, the Heisenberg scaling appears to be irremediably lost. Here we show that this limitation can sometimes be lifted if the experimenter has the ability to probe physical processes in a coherent superposition of alternative configurations. As a concrete example, we consider the prob…
The goal of quantum metrology is the precise estimation of parameters using quantum properties such as entanglement. This estimation usually consists of three steps: state preparation, time evolution during which information of the parameters is encoded in the state, and readout of the state. Decoherence during the time evolution typically degrades the performance of quantum metrology and is considered to be one of the major obstacles to realizing entanglement-enhanced sensing. We show, however, that under suitable conditions, this decoherence can be exploited to improve the sensitivity. Assum…
We show a protocol achieving the ultimate Heisenberg-scaling sensitivity in the estimation of a parameter encoded in a generic linear network, without employing any auxiliary networks, and without the need of any prior information on the parameter nor on the network structure. As a result, this protocol does not require a prior coarse estimation of the parameter, nor an adaptation of the network. The scheme we analyse consists of a single-mode squeezed state and homodyne detectors in each of the $M$ output channels of the network encoding the parameter, making it feasible for experimental appl…
By considering matter wave bright solitons from weakly coupled Bose-Einstein condensates trapped in a double-well potential, we study the formation of macroscopic non-classical states, including Schrödinger-cat superposition states and maximally path entangled $N00N$-states. With these macroscopic states, we examine Mach-Zehnder interferometer in the context of parity measurements, in order to obtain Heisenberg limit accuracy for linear phase shift measurement. We reveal that the ratio between two-body scattering length and intra-well hopping parameter can be measured with the scaling beyond t…
Spin cat states are promising candidates for quantum-enhanced measurement. Here, we analytically show that the ultimate measurement precision of spin cat states approaches the Heisenberg limit, where the uncertainty is inversely proportional to the total particle number. In order to fully exploit their metrological ability, we propose to use the interaction-based readout for implementing phase estimation. It is demonstrated that the interaction-based readout enables spin cat states to saturate their ultimate precision bounds. The interaction-based readout comprises a one-axis twisting, two $\f…
The precision of quantum metrology is widely believed to be restricted by the Heisenberg limit, corresponding to a root mean square error that is inversely proportional to the number of independent processes probed in an experiment, N. In the past, some proposals have challenged this belief, for example using non-linear interactions among the probes. However, these proposals turned out to still obey the Heisenberg limit with respect to other relevant resources, such as the total energy of the probes. Here, we present a photonic implementation of a quantum metrology protocol surpassing the Heis…
We address the framework of analysing quantum metrology in the information-theoretic picture. Firstly we show how to extract the maximum amount of information in general via suitable state initialization of the probes at the beginning and a quantum measurement at the end. Our analysis can apply to both the single-parameter and the multi-parameter estimation procedures as well as to any other quantum information processing procedures. We then establish a direct connection between the information-theoretic picture of quantum metrology and its conventional variance-covariance picture, by showing …
Quantum metrology has many important applications in science and technology, ranging from frequency spectroscopy to gravitational wave detection. Quantum mechanics imposes a fundamental limit on measurement precision, called the Heisenberg limit, which can be achieved for noiseless quantum systems, but is not achievable in general for systems subject to noise. Here we study how measurement precision can be enhanced through quantum error correction, a general method for protecting a quantum system from the damaging effects of noise. We find a necessary and sufficient condition for achieving the…
We have previously shown that quantum-enhanced atom interferometry can be achieved by mapping the quantum state of squeezed optical vacuum to one of the atomic inputs via a beamsplitter-like process [Phys.~Rev.~A \textbf{90}, 063630 (2014)]. Here we ask the question: is a better phase sensitivity possible if the quantum state transfer (QST) is described by a three-mode-mixing model, rather than a beamsplitter? The answer is yes, but only if the portion of the optical state not transferred to the atoms is incorporated via information recycling. Surprisingly, our scheme gives a better sensitivit…
In quantum metrology, entanglement represents a valuable resource that can be used to overcome the Standard Quantum Limit (SQL) that bounds the precision of sensors that operate with independent particles. Measurements beyond the SQL are typically enabled by relatively simple entangled states (squeezed states with Gaussian probability distributions), where quantum noise is redistributed between different quadratures. However, due to both fundamental limitations and the finite measurement resolution achieved in practice, sensors based on squeezed states typically operate far from the true funda…
University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；Google Quantum AI（谷歌量子人工智能）
Leveraging quantum effects in metrology such as entanglement and coherence allows one to measure parameters with enhanced sensitivity. However, time-dependent noise can disrupt such Heisenberg-limited amplification. We propose a quantum-metrology method based on the quantum-signal-processing framework to overcome these realistic noise-induced limitations in practical quantum metrology. Our algorithm separates the gate parameter $φ$~(single-qubit Z phase) that is susceptible to time-dependent error from the target gate parameter $θ$~(swap-angle between |10> and |01> states) that is largely free…
Current metrological bounds typically assume full control over all particles that are involved in the protocol. Relaxing this assumption we study metrological performance when only limited control is available. As an example, we measure a static magnetic field when a fully controlled quantum sensor is supplemented by particles over which only global control is possible. We show that even for a noisy quantum sensor, a protocol that maps the magnetic field to a precession frequency can achieve transient super-Heisenberg scaling in measurement time and Heisenberg scaling in the particle number. T…
The quantum fisher information and quantum correlation parameters are employed to study the application of non-classical light to the problem of parameter estimation. It is shown that the optimal measurement sensitivity of a quantum state is determined by its inter-mode correlations (which depends of path-entanglement) and intra-mode correlations (which depends of the photon statistics). In light of these results, we consider the performance of quantum-enhanced optical interferometers. Furthermore, we propose a Heisenberg-limited metrology protocol involving standard elements from passive and …
Encoded Quantum Signal Processing for Heisenberg-Limited Metrology
Physical Detection Systems and Deployment Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory（太平洋西北国家实验室物理探测系统与部署部）；Department of Computer Science, Colorado State University（科罗拉多州立大学计算机科学系）；Department of Physics, University of Toronto（多伦多大学物理系）；Advanced Computing, Mathematics, and Data Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory（太平洋西北国家实验室先进计算、数学与数据部）
We propose a measurement setup reaching Heisenberg scaling precision for the estimation of any distributed parameter $φ$ (not necessarily a phase) encoded into a generic $M$-port linear network composed only of passive elements. The scheme proposed can be easily implemented from an experimental point of view since it employs only Gaussian states and Gaussian measurements. Due to the complete generality of the estimation problem considered, it was predicted that one would need to carry out an adaptive procedure which involves both the input states employed and the measurement performed at the o…
We discuss the Heisenberg limit in the multiparameter metrology within two different paradigms -- the one, where the measurement is repeated many times (so the Cramér-Rao bound is guaranteed to be asymptotically saturable) and the second one, where all the resources are allocated into one experimental realization (analyzed with the mimimax approach). We investigate the potential advantage of measuring all the parameter simultaneously compared to estimating them individually, while spending the same total amount of resources. We show that in general the existence of such an advantage, its magni…
We address the issue of precisely estimating small parameters encoded in a general linear transformation of the modes of a bosonic quantum field. Such Bogoliubov transformations frequently appear in the context of quantum optics. We provide a set of instructions for computing the quantum Fisher information for arbitrary pure initial states. We show that the maximally achievable precision of estimation is inversely proportional to the squared average particle number and that such Heisenberg scaling requires non-classical, but not necessarily entangled states. Our method further allows us to qua…
The estimation of physical parameters with Heisenberg sensitivity and beyond is one of the crucial problems for current quantum metrology. However, unavoidable lossy effect is commonly believed to be the main obstacle when applying fragile quantum states. To utilize the lossy quantum metrology, we offer an interferometric procedure for phase parameters estimation at the Heisenberg (up to 1/N) and super-Heisenberg (up to 1/N^3) scaling levels in the framework of the linear and nonlinear metrology approaches, respectively. The heart of our setup is the novel soliton Josephson Junction (SJJ) syst…
Information recycling has been shown to improve the sensitivity of atom interferometers by exploiting atom-light entanglement. In this paper, we apply information recycling to an interferometer where the input quantum state has been partially transferred from some donor system. We demonstrate that when the quantum state of this donor system is from a particular class of number-correlated Heisenberg-limited states, information recycling yields a Heisenberg-limited phase measurement. Crucially, this result holds irrespective of the fraction of the quantum state transferred to the interferometer …
Geometric bounds on multiparameter Heisenberg scaling in optical metrology with limited squeezed resources
University of Portsmouth（朴茨茅斯大学）；Quantum Science and Technology Hub, University of Portsmouth（朴茨茅斯大学量子科学与技术中心）；Università di Bari（巴里大学）；INFN, Sezione di Bari（意大利国家核物理研究所巴里分部）；Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth（朴茨茅斯大学宇宙学与引力研究所）
Two-mode interferometers, such as Michelson interferometer based on two spatial optical modes, lay the foundations for quantum metrology. Instead of exploring quantum entanglement in the two-mode interferometers, a single bosonic mode also promises a measurement precision beyond the shot-noise limit (SNL) by taking advantage of the infinite-dimensional Hilbert space of Fock states. However, the experimental demonstration still remains elusive. Here, we demonstrate a single-mode phase estimation that approaches the Heisenberg limit (HL) unconditionally. Due to the strong dispersive nonlinearity…
We propose a quantum metrology scheme in a cavity QED setup to achieve the Heisenberg limit. In our scheme, a series of identical two-level atoms randomly pass through and interact with a dissipative single-mode cavity. Different from the entanglement based Heisenberg limit metrology scheme, we do not need to prepare the atomic entangled states before they enter into the cavity. We show that the initial atomic coherence will induce an effective driving to the cavity field, whose steady state is an incoherent superposition of orthogonal states, with the superposition probabilities being depende…
We study quantum frequency estimation for $N$ qubits subjected to independent Markovian noise, via strategies based on time-continuous monitoring of the environment. Both physical intuition and an extended convexity property of the quantum Fisher information (QFI) suggest that these strategies are more effective than the standard ones based on the measurement of the unconditional state after the noisy evolution. Here we focus on initial GHZ states and on parallel or transverse noise. For parallel noise, i.e. dephasing, we show that perfectly efficient time-continuous photo-detection allows to …
Noise is the greatest obstacle in quantum metrology that limits it achievable precision and sensitivity. There are many techniques to mitigate the effect of noise, but this can never be done completely. One commonly proposed technique is to repeatedly apply quantum error correction. Unfortunately, the required repetition frequency needed to recover the Heisenberg limit is unachievable with the existing quantum technologies. In this article we explore the discrete application of quantum error correction with current technological limitations in mind. We establish that quantum error correction c…
We propose an $N$-photon Gaussian measurement scheme which allows the estimation of a parameter $φ$ encoded into a multi-port interferometer with a Heisenberg scaling precision (i.e. of order $1/N$). In this protocol, no restrictions on the structure of the interferometer are imposed other than linearity and passivity, allowing the parameter $φ$ to be distributed over several components. In all previous proposals Heisenberg scaling has been obtained provided that both the input state and the measurement at the output are suitably adapted to the unknown parameter $φ$. This is a serious drawback…
We show how quantum metrology protocols that seek to estimate the parameters of a Hamiltonian that exhibits a quantum phase transition can be efficiently simulated on an exponentially smaller quantum computer. Specifically, by exploiting the fact that the ground state of such a Hamiltonian changes drastically around its phase transition point, we construct a suitable observable from which one can estimate the relevant parameters of the Hamiltonian with Heisenberg scaling precision. We then show how, for the one-dimensional Ising Hamiltonian with transverse magnetic field acting on N spins, suc…
