We study the sensitivity of phase estimation in a lossy Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) using two general, and practical, resources generated by a laser and a nonlinear optical medium with passive optimal elements, which are readily available in the laboratory: One is a two-mode separable coherent and squeezed vacuum state at a beam splitter and the other is a two-mode squeezed vacuum state. In view of the ultimate precision given by quantum Fisher information, we show that the two-mode squeezed vacuum state can achieve a lower bound of estimation error than the coherent and squeezed vacuum state under a photon-loss channel. We further consider practical measurement schemes, homodyne detection and photon number resolving detection (PNRD), to characterize the accuracy of phase estimation in reality and find that the coherent and squeezed vacuum state largely achieves a lower bound than the two-mode squeezed vacuum in the lossy MZI while maintaining quantum enhancement over the shot-noise limit. By comparing homodyne detection and PNRD, we demonstrate that quadrature measurement with homodyne detection is more robust against photon loss than parity measurement with PNRD. We also show that double homodyne detection can provide a better tool for phase estimation than single homodyne detection against photon loss.
Quantum mechanics allows entanglement enhanced measurements to be performed, but loss remains an obstacle in constructing realistic quantum metrology schemes. However, recent work has revealed that entangled coherent states (ECSs) have the potential to perform robust sub-classical measurements [J. Joo et. al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 83601 (2011)]. Up to now no read out scheme has been devised which exploits this robust nature of ECSs, but we present here an experimentally accessible method of achieving precision close to the theoretical bound, even with loss. We show substantial improvements ov…
We study the precise phase estimation using squeezed states with photon losses present. Our exact quantum Fisher information calculation shows significant quantum enhancement and thus reveals the benchmark for practical quantum metrology in this noisy scenario. However, we find that the existing parity measurement scheme [P.M. Anisimov et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 103602 (2010)] behaves worse than even classical cases given very small losses, unless we take an appropriate loss dependent phase shift. Using our formulae, the two optimized aspects including the pre-detection phase shift and the c…
We study the phase sensitivity in the conventional $SU(2)$ and nonconventional $SU(1,1)$ interferometers with the coherent and squeezed vacuum input state via the quantum Cramer-Rao bound. We explicitly construct the detection scheme that gives the optimal phase sensitivity. For practical purposes, we show that in the presence of photon loss, both interferometers with proper homodyne detections, are nearly optimal. We also find that unlike the coherent state and squeezed vacuum state, the effects of the imperfect detector on the phase sensitivity cannot be asymptotically removed for a generic …
In optical interferometry multi-mode entanglement is often assumed to be the driving force behind quantum enhanced measurements. Recent work has shown this assumption to be false: single mode quantum states perform just as well as their multi-mode entangled counterparts. We go beyond this to show that when photon losses occur - an inevitability in any realistic system - multi-mode entanglement is actually detrimental to obtaining quantum enhanced measurements. We specifically apply this idea to a superposition of coherent states, demonstrating that these states show a robustness to loss that a…
We investigate an optimal distance of two components in an entangled coherent state for quantum phase estimation in lossy interferometry. The optimal distance is obtained by an economical point, representing the quantum Fisher information that we can extract per input energy. Maximizing the formula of the quantum Fisher information over an input mean photon number, we show that, as the losses of the interferometer increase, it can be more beneficial to prepare an initially entangled coherent state that is less entangled. This represents that the optimal distance of the two-mode components decr…
To acquire the best path-entangled photon Fock states for robust quantum optical metrology with parity detection, we calculate phase information from a lossy interferometer by using twin entangled Fock states. We show that (a) when loss is less than 50% twin entangled Fock states with large photon number difference give higher visibility while when loss is higher than 50% the ones with less photon number difference give higher visibility; (b) twin entangled Fock states with large photon number difference give sub-shot-noise limit sensitivity for phase detection in a lossy environment. This res…
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…
We demonstrate that the optimal states in lossy quantum interferometry may be efficiently simulated using low rank matrix product states. We argue that this should be expected in all realistic quantum metrological protocols with uncorrelated noise and is related to the elusive nature of the Heisenberg precision scaling in presence of decoherence.
We present an improved phase estimation scheme employing entangled coherent states and demon- strate that the states give the smallest variance in the phase parameter in comparison to NOON, BAT and "optimal" states under perfect and lossy conditions. As these advantages emerge for very modest particle numbers, the optical version of entangled coherent state metrology is achievable with current technology.
We apply the variational method to obtain the universal and analytical lower bounds for parameter precision in some noisy systems. We first derive a lower bound for phase precision in lossy optical interferometry at non-zero temperature. Then we consider the effect of both amplitude damping and phase diffusion on phase-shift precision. At last, we extend the constant phase estimation to the case of continuous fluctuating phase estimation, and find that due to photon losses the corresponding mean square error transits from the stochastic Heisenberg limit to the stochastic standard quantum limit…
Dose-efficient Quantum Phase Estimation in Lossy Optical Interferometry
National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures and College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Nanjing University（南京大学固体微结构物理国家重点实验室和工程与应用科学学院）；School of Materials Science and Physics, China University of Mining and Technology（中国矿业大学材料科学与工程学院）
Quantum metrology research promises approaches to build new sensors that achieve the ultimate level of precision measurement and perform fundamentally better than modern sensors. Practical schemes that tolerate realistic fabrication imperfections and environmental noise are required in order to realise quantum-enhanced sensors and to enable their real-world application. We have demonstrated the key enabling principles of a practical, loss-tolerant approach to photonic quantum metrology designed to harness all multi-photon components in spontaneous parametric downconversion---a method for gener…
Optical absorption measurements characterize a wide variety of systems from atomic gases to \emph{in-vivo} diagnostics of living organisms. Here we study the potential of non-classical techniques to reduce statistical noise below the shot-noise limit in absorption measurements with concomitant phase shifts imparted by a sample. We consider both cases where there is a known relationship between absorption and a phase shift, and where this relationship is unknown. For each case we derive the fundamental limit and provide a practical strategy to reduce statistical noise. Furthermore, we find an i…
Preparing highly entangled quantum states between remote parties is a major challenge for quantum communications [1-8]. Particularly promising in this context are the N00N states, which are entangled N-photon wavepackets delocalized between two different locations, providing measurement sensitivity limited only by the uncertainty principle [1, 10-15]. However, these states are notoriously vulnerable to losses, making it difficult both to share them between remote locations, and to recombine them to exploit interference effects. Here we address this challenge by utilizing the reverse version of…
Quantum metrology exploits quantum correlations to make precise measurements with limited particle numbers. By utilizing inter- and intra- mode correlations in an optical interferometer, we find a state that combines entanglement and squeezing to give a 7-fold enhancement in the quantum Fisher information (QFI) -- a metric related to the precision -- over the shot noise limit, for low photon numbers. Motivated by practicality we then look at the squeezed cat-state, which has recently been made experimentally, and shows further precision gains over the shot noise limit and a 3-fold improvement …
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…
Quantum error correction has recently emerged as a tool to enhance quantum sensing under Markovian noise. It works by correcting errors in a sensor while letting a signal imprint on the logical state. This approach typically requires a specialized error-correcting code, as most existing codes correct away both the dominant errors and the signal. To date, however, few such specialized codes are known, among which most require noiseless, controllable ancillas. We show here that such ancillas are not needed when the signal Hamiltonian and the error operators commute; a common limiting type of dec…
We derive fundamental bounds on the maximal achievable precision in multiparameter noisy quantum metrology, valid under the most general entanglement-assisted adaptive strategy, which are tighter than the bounds obtained by a direct use of single-parameter results. This allows us to study the issue of the optimal probe incompatibility in the simultaneous estimation of multiple parameters in generic noisy channels, while so far the issue has been studied mostly in effectively noiseless scenarios (where the Heisenberg scaling is possible). We apply our results to the estimation of both unitary a…
The estimation of parameters characterizing dynamical processes is central to science and technology. The estimation error changes with the number N of resources employed in the experiment (which could quantify, for instance, the number of probes or the probing energy). Typically, it scales as 1/N^(1/2). Quantum strategies may improve the precision, for noiseless processes, by an extra factor 1/N^(1/2). For noisy processes, it is not known in general if and when this improvement can be achieved. Here we propose a general framework for obtaining attainable and useful lower bounds for the ultima…
Quantum metrology overcomes standard precision limits and plays a central role in science and technology. Practically it is vulnerable to imperfections such as decoherence. Here, we demonstrate quantum metrology for noisy channels such that entanglement with ancillary qubits enhances the quantum Fisher information for phase estimation but not otherwise. Our photonic experiment covers a range of noise for various types of channels, including for two randomly alternating channels such that assisted entanglement fails for each noisy channel individually. We have simulated noisy channels by implem…
Quantum entanglement offers the possibility of making measurements beyond the classical limit, however some issues still need to be overcome before it can be applied in realistic lossy systems. Recent work has used the quantum Fisher information (QFI) to show that entangled coherent states (ECSs) may be useful for this purpose as they combine sub-classical phase precision capabilities with robustness (Joo et al., 2011). However, to date no effective scheme for measuring a phase in lossy systems using an ECS has been devised. Here we present a scheme that does just this. We show how one could m…
Nonclassical states are essential for optics-based quantum information processing, but their fragility limits their utility for practical scenarios in which loss and noise inevitably degrade, if not destroy, nonclassicality. Exploiting nonclassical states in quantum metrology yields sensitivity advantages over all classical schemes delivering the same energy per measurement interval to the sample being probed. These enhancements, almost without exception, are severely diminished by quantum decoherence. Here, we experimentally demonstrate an entanglement-enhanced sensing system that is resilien…
Recently, counterfactual quantum cryptography proposed by T. G. Noh [Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 230501 (2009)] becomes an interesting direction in quantum cryptography, and has been realized by some researchers (such as Y. Liu et al's [Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 030501 (2012)]). However, we find out that it is insecure in practical high lossy channel setting. We analyze the secret key rates in lossy channel under a polarization-splitting-measurement attack. Analysis indicates that the protocol is insecure when the loss rate of the one-way channel exceeds $50%$.
The problem of estimating an unknown phase $ φ$ using two-level probes in the presence of unital phase-covariant noise and using finite resources is investigated. We introduce a simple model in which the phase-imprinting operation on the probes is realized by a unitary transformation with a randomly sampled generator. We determine the optimal phase sensitivity in a sequential estimation protocol, and derive a general (tight-fitting) lower bound. The sensitivity grows quadratically with the number of applications $ N $ of the phase-imprinting operation, then attains a maximum at some $ N_\text{…
Quantum metrology with entangled resources aims to achieve sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit by harnessing quantum effects even in the presence of environmental noise. So far, sensitivity has been mainly discussed from the viewpoint of reducing statistical errors under the assumption of perfect knowledge of a noise model. However, we cannot always obtain complete information about a noise model due to coherence time fluctuations, which are frequently observed in experiments. Such unknown fluctuating noise leads to systematic errors and nullifies the quantum advantages. Here, we pro…
Quantum metrology is a promising practical use case for quantum technologies, where physical quantities can be measured with unprecedented precision. In lieu of quantum error correction procedures, near term quantum devices are expected to be noisy, and we have to make do with noisy probe states. We prove that, for a set of carefully chosen symmetric probe states that lie within certain quantum error correction codes, quantum metrology exhibits an advantage over classical metrology even after the probe states are corrupted by a constant number of erasure and dephasing errors. These probe state…
Experimentally achieving the precision that standard quantum metrology schemes promise is always challenging. Recently, additional controls were applied to design feasible quantum metrology schemes. However, these approaches generally does not consider ease of implementation, raising technological barriers impeding its realization. In this paper, we circumvent this problem by applying closed-loop learning control to propose a practical controlled sequential scheme for quantum metrology. Purity loss of the probe state, which relates to quantum Fisher information, is measured efficiently as the …
The field of quantum communications promises the faithful distribution of quantum information, quantum entanglement, and absolutely secret keys, however, the highest rates of these tasks are fundamentally limited by the transmission distance between quantum repeaters. The ultimate end-to-end rates of quantum communication networks are known to be achievable by an optimal entanglement distillation protocol followed by teleportation. In this work, we give a practical design for this achievability. Our ultimate design is an iterative approach, where each purification step operates on shared entan…
A longstanding problem in quantum metrology is how to extract as much information as possible in realistic scenarios with not only multiple unknown parameters, but also limited measurement data and some degree of prior information. Here we present a practical solution to this: we derive a new Bayesian multi-parameter quantum bound, construct the optimal measurement when our bound can be saturated for a single shot and consider experiments involving a repeated sequence of these measurements. Our method properly accounts for the number of measurements and the degree of prior information, and we …
We demonstrate the fundamental links existing between two different descriptions of quantum electrodynamics in inhomogeneous, lossy and dispersive dielectric media which are based either on the Huttner-Barnett formalism for polaritons [B. Huttner and S. M. Barnett, Phys.Rev. A 46, 4306 (1992)] or the Langevin noise approach using fluctuating currents [T. Gruner and D.-G. Welsch, Phys.Rev.A 53, 1818 (1996)]. In this work we demonstrate the practical equivalence of the two descriptions by introducing the concept of effective photon state associated with some specific noise current distribution. …
Quantum metrology pursues high-precision measurements of physical quantities by using quantum resources. However, the decoherence generally hinders its performance. Previous work found that the metrological error tends to diverge in the long-encoding-time regime due to the Born-Markovian approximate decoherence, which is called the no-go theorem of noisy quantum metrology. Here we propose a Gaussian quantum metrology scheme using bimodal quantized optical fields as the quantum probe. It achieves the precision of a sub-Heisenberg limit in the ideal case. However, the Markovian decoherence cause…
We examine quantum detection via a Michelson interferometer embedded in a gas with Kerr nonlinearity. This nonlinear interferometer is illuminated by pulses of classical light. This strategy combines the robustness against practical imperfections of classical light with the improvement provided by nonlinear processes. Regarding ultimate quantum limits, we stress that, as a difference with linear schemes, the nonlinearity introduces pulse duration as a new variable into play along with the energy resources.
Upper bounds on the secret-key-agreement capacity of a quantum channel serve as a way to assess the performance of practical quantum-key-distribution protocols conducted over that channel. In particular, if a protocol employs a quantum repeater, achieving secret-key rates exceeding these upper bounds is a witness to having a working quantum repeater. In this paper, we extend a recent advance [Liuzzo-Scorpo et al., arXiv:1705.03017] in the theory of the teleportation simulation of single-mode phase-insensitive Gaussian channels such that it now applies to the relative entropy of entanglement me…
By using highly entangled states, quantum metrology guarantees precision impossible with classical measurements. Unfortunately such states can be very susceptible to noise, and it is a great challenge of the field to maintain quantum advantage in realistic conditions. In this study we investigate the practicality of graph states for quantum metrology. Graph states are a natural resource for much of quantum information, and here we characterize their quantum Fisher information (QFI) for an arbitrary graph state. We then construct families of graph states which approximately achieves the Heisenb…
The success of quantum technologies is intimately connected to the possibility of using them in real-world applications. To this aim, we study the sensing capabilities of quantum SU(1,1) interferometers in the single-photon-pair regime and in the presence of losses, a situation highly relevant to practical realistic measurements of extremely photosensitive materials. We show that coincidence measurement can be exploited to partially mitigate the effect of losses inside the interferometer. Finally, we find that quantum SU(1,1) interferometers are capable of outperforming classical SU(2) systems…
Quantum metrology protocols are typically designed around the assumption that we have an abundance of measurement data, but recent practical applications are increasingly driving interest in cases with very limited data. In this regime the best approach involves an interesting interplay between the amount of data and the prior information. Here we propose a new way of optimising these schemes based on the practically-motivated assumption that we have a sequence of identical and independent measurements. For a given probe state we take our measurement to be the best one for a single shot and we…
Quantum metrology allows us to attain a measurement precision that surpasses the classically achievable limit by using quantum characters. The metrology precision is raised from the standard quantum limit (SQL) to the Heisenberg limit (HL) by using entanglement. However, it was reported that the HL returns to the SQL in the presence of local dephasing environments under the long encoding-time condition. We evaluate here the exact impacts of local dissipative environments on quantum metrology, based on the Ramsey interferometer. It is found that the HL is asymptotically recovered under the long…
Practical implementations of quantum cryptography use attenuated laser pulses as the signal source rather than single photons. The channels used to transmit are also lossy. Here we give a simple derivation of two beam-splitting attacks on quantum cryptographic systems using laser pulses, either coherent or mixed states with any mean photon number. We also give a simple derivation of a photon-number splitting attack, the most advanced, both in terms of performance and technology required. We find bounds on the maximum disturbance for a given mean photon number and observed channel transmission …
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 …
We analyze a cavity optomechanical setup, in which position of an oscillator modulates optical loss. We show that in such setup quantum limited position measurements can be performed if the external cavity coupling rate matches the optical loss rate, a condition known as "critical coupling". Additionally, under this condition the setup exhibits a number of potential benefits for practical operation including the complete absence of dynamical backaction, and hence optomechanical instability, and rejection of classical laser noise and thermal fluctuations of cavity frequency from the measurement…
Scaling Enhancement in Quantum Metrology via Indefinite-Time-Direction Encoding
Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；The University of Hong Kong（香港大学）；Hefei National Laboratory（合肥国家实验室）；Shanghai Research Center for Quantum Sciences（上海量子科学研究中心）
In this paper, we use the non-linear dynamics of the individual quantum trajectories of an optical cavity inside an instantaneous quantum feedback loop to measure the phase shift between two pathways of light with an accuracy above the standard quantum limit. The feedback laser provides a reference frame and constantly increases the dependence of the state of the resonator on the unknown phase. Since our quantum metrology scheme can be implemented with current technology and does not require highly-efficient single photon detectors, it should be of practical interest until highly-entangled man…
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…
Metrology for Quantum Hardware Standardization -- Charting a Pathway: A Strategic Review
AIST, Global Research and Development Center for Business by Quantum-AI Technology (G-QuAT)（产业技术综合研究所，量子人工智能技术驱动业务全球研发中心）；National Metrology Institute of Japan (NMIJ)（日本国家计量院）
Physical implementations of quantum information processing devices are generally not unique, and we are faced with the problem of choosing the best implementation. Here, we consider the sensitivity of quantum devices to variations in their different components. To measure this, we adopt a quantum metrological approach, and find that the sensitivity of a device to variations in a component has a particularly simple general form. We use the concept of cost functions to establish a general practical criterion to decide between two different physical implementations of the same quantum device cons…
In optical metrological protocols to measure physical quantities, it is, in principle, always beneficial to increase photon number to improve measurement precision. However, practical constraints prevent arbitrary increase of n due to the imperfections of a practical detector, especially when the detector response is dominated by saturation effect. In this work, we show that a modified weak measurement protocol, namely, biased weak measurement significantly improves the precision of optical metrology in the presence of saturation effect. This method detects an ultra-small fraction of photons w…
There are a number of different strategies to measure the phase shift between two pathways of light more efficiently than suggested by the standard quantum limit. One way is to use highly entangled photons. Another way is to expose photons to a non-linear or interacting Hamiltonian. This paper emphasises that the conditional dynamics of open quantum systems provides an interesting additional tool for quantum-enhanced metrology. As a concrete example, we review a recent scheme which exploits the conditional dynamics of a laser-driven optical cavity with spontaneous photon emission inside a quan…
A promising practical application of entanglement is metrology, where quantum states can be used to make measurements beyond the shot noise limit. Here we consider how metrology schemes could be realised using atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) trapped in different potentials. In particular, we show that if a trapped BEC is rotated at just the right frequency, it can undergo a quantum phase transition characterised by large-scale entanglement spreading across the system. This simple process of stirring can generate interesting quantum states such as macroscopic superpositions of all the a…
Quantum metrology enhances measurement precision by utilising the properties of quantum physics. In interferometry, this is typically achieved by evolving highly-entangled quantum states before performing single-shot measurements to reveal information about an unknown parameter. While this is often the optimum approach, implementation with all but the smallest states is still extremely challenging. An alternative approach is quantum jump metrology [L. A. Clark et al., Phys. Rev. A 99, 022102 (2019)] which deduces information by continuously monitoring an open quantum system, while inducing pha…
