We study the role of bath-induced correlations in temperature estimation of cold bosonic baths. Our protocol includes multiple probes, that are not interacting, nor are they initially correlated to each other. They interact with a bosonic sample and reach a nonthermal steady state, which is measured to estimate the temperature of the sample. It is well known that in the steady state such noninteracting probes may get correlated to each other and even entangled. Nonetheless, the impact of these correlations in metrology has not been deeply investigated yet. Here, we examine their role for thermometry of cold bosonic gases and show that, although being classical, bath-induced correlations can lead to significant enhancement of precision for thermometry. The improvement is especially important at low temperatures, where attaining high precision thermometry is particularly demanding. The proposed thermometry scheme does not require any precise dynamical control of the probes and tuning the parameters and is robust to noise in initial preparation, as it is built upon the steady state generated by the natural dissipative dynamics of the system. Therefore, our results put forward new possibilities in thermometry at low temperatures, of relevance, for instance, in cold gases and Bose-Einstein condensates.
We address the dephasing dynamics of the quantum Fisher information (QFI) for the process of quantum thermometry with probes coupled to squeezed thermal baths via the nondemolition interaction. We also calculate the upper bound for the parameter estimation and investigate how the optimal estimation is affected by the initial conditions and decoherence, particularly the squeezing parameters. Moreover, the feasibility of the optimal measurement of the temperature is discussed in detail. Then, the results are generalized for entangled probes and the multi-qubit scenarios for probing the temperatu…
Probing Non-equilibrium baths: Frequency-Resolved Thermometry and Quantum Heat Current Turnover
Institute for Theoretical Physics, Department of Quantum and Classical Dynamics, Johannes Kepler Universität Linz（林茨约翰·开普勒大学理论物理系量子与经典动力学部）；Schulich Faculty of Chemistry and Helen Diller Quantum Center, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology（以色列理工学院舒利希化学学院及海伦·迪勒量子中心）
A scheme for improving the sensitivity of quantum thermometry is proposed where the sensing quantum system used to recover the temperature of an external bath is dynamically coupled with an external ancilla (a meter) via a Hamiltonian term $\hat{H}_I$. At variance with previous approaches, our scheme relies neither on the presence of initial entanglement between the sensor and the meter, nor on the possibility of performing joint measurements on the two systems. The advantages we report arise from the fact that the presence of $\hat{H}_I$ interferes with the bath-sensor interaction, transformi…
We study the ultimate bounds on the estimation of temperature for an interacting quantum system. We consider two coupled bosonic modes that are assumed to be thermal and using quantum estimation theory establish the role the Hamiltonian parameters play in thermometry. We show that in the case of a conserved particle number the interaction between the modes leads to a decrease in the overall sensitivity to temperature, while interestingly, if particle exchange is allowed with the thermal bath the converse is true. We explain this dichotomy by examining the energy spectra. Finally, we devise exp…
We assess precision thermometry for an arbitrary single quantum system. For a $d$-dimensional harmonic system we show that the gap sets a single temperature that can be optimally estimated. Furthermore, we establish a simple linear relationship between the gap and this temperature, and show that the precision exhibits a quadratic relationship. We extend our analysis to explore systems with arbitrary spectra, showing that exploiting anharmonicity and degeneracy can greatly enhance the precision of thermometry. Finally, we critically assess the dynamical features of two thermometry protocols for…
Single-qubit thermometry presents the simplest tool to measure the temperature of thermal baths with reduced invasivity. At thermal equilibrium, the temperature uncertainty is linked to the heat capacity of the qubit, however the best precision is achieved outside equilibrium condition. Here, we discuss a way to generalize this relation in a non-equilibrium regime, taking into account purely quantum effects such as coherence. We support our findings with an experimental photonic simulation.
Using a two-level moving probe, we address the temperature estimation of a static thermal bath modeled by a massless scalar field prepared in a thermal state. Different couplings of the probe to the field are discussed under various scenarios. We find that the thermometry is completely unaffected by the Lamb shift of the energy levels. We take into account the roles of probe velocity, its initial preparation, and environmental control parameters for achieving optimal temperature estimation. We show that a practical technique can be utilized to implement such a quantum thermometry. Finally, exp…
We address a particular instance where open quantum systems may be used as quantum probes for an emergent property of a complex system, as the temperature of a thermal bath. The inherent fragility of the quantum probes against decoherence is the key feature making the overall scheme very sensitive. The specific setting examined here is that of quantum thermometry, which aims to exploits decoherence as resource to estimate the temperature of a sample. We focus on temperature estimation for a bosonic bath at equilibrium in the Ohmic regime (ranging from sub-Ohmic to super- Ohmic), by using pairs…
We address estimation of temperature for finite quantum systems at thermal equilibrium and show that the Landau bound to precision $δT^2 \propto T^2$, originally derived for a classical {\em not too small} system being a portion of a large isolated system at thermal equilibrium, may be also achieved by energy measurement in microscopic {\em quantum} systems exhibiting vanishing gap as a function of some control parameter. On the contrary, for any quantum system with a non-vanishing gap $Δ$, precision of any temperature estimator diverges as $δT^2 \gtrsim T^4 e^{Δ/T}$.
Nonequilibrium thermometry via an ensemble of initially correlated qubits
Istituto Nazionale di Ottica del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR-INO)（意大利国家光学研究所）；Department of Physics and Astronomy, Università di Firenze（佛罗伦萨大学物理与天文学系）；European Laboratory for Non-linear Spectroscopy, Università di Firenze（佛罗伦萨大学欧洲非线性光谱学实验室）
High-precision low-temperature thermometry is a challenge for experimental quantum physics and quantum sensing. Here we consider a thermometer modelled by a dynamically-controlled multilevel quantum probe in contact with a bath. Dynamical control in the form of periodic modulation of the energy-level spacings of the quantum probe can dramatically increase the maximum accuracy bound of low-temperatures estimation, by maximizing the relevant quantum Fisher information. As opposed to the diverging relative error bound at low temperatures in conventional quantum thermometry, periodic modulation of…
As the minituarization of electronic devices, which are sensitive to temperature, grows apace, sensing of temperature with ever smaller probes is more important than ever. Genuinely quantum mechanical schemes of thermometry are thus expected to be crucial to future technological progress. We propose a new method to measure the temperature of a bath using the weak measurement scheme with a finite dimensional probe. The precision offered by the present scheme not only shows similar qualitative features as the usual Quantum Fisher Information based thermometric protocols, but also allows for flex…
We propose a novel approach to qubit thermometry using a quantum switch, that introduces an indefinite causal order in the probe-bath interaction, to significantly enhance the thermometric precision. The resulting qubit probe shows improved precision in both low and high temperature regimes when compared to optimal qubit probes studied previously. It even performs better than a Harmonic oscillator probe, in spite of having only two energy levels rather than an infinite number of energy levels as that in a harmonic oscillator. We thereby show unambiguously that quantum resources such as the qua…
We explore the consequences of periodically modulating a quantum two-level system (TLS) with an asymmetric pulse when the system is in contact with thermal baths. By adopting the Floquet-Lindblad formalism for our analysis, we find that the unequal "up" and "down" time duration of the pulse has two main ramifications. First, the energy gap of the multiple sidebands or photon sectors created as a result of the periodic modulation are renormalized by a term which is dependent on both the modulation strength as well as the fraction of up (or down) time duration. Second, the weights of the differe…
Precise thermometry is of wide importance in science and technology in general and in quantum systems in particular. Here, we investigate fundamental precision limits for thermometry on cold quantum systems, taking into account constraints due to finite measurement resolution. We derive a tight bound on the optimal precision scaling with temperature, as the temperature approaches zero. The bound can be saturated by monitoring the non-equilibrium dynamics of a single-qubit probe. We support this finding by accurate numerical simulations of a spin-boson model. Our results are relevant both funda…
There exist severe limitations on the accuracy of low-temperature thermometry, which poses a major challenge for future quantum-technological applications. Low-temperature sensitivity might be manipulated by tailoring the interactions between probe and sample. Unfortunately, the tunability of these interactions is usually very restricted. Here, we focus on a more practical solution to boost thermometric precision -- driving the probe. Specifically, we solve for the limit cycle of a periodically modulated linear probe in an equilibrium sample. We treat the probe-sample interactions \textit{exac…
A classical thermometer typically works by exchanging energy with the system being measured until it comes to equilibrium, at which point the readout is related to the final energy state of the thermometer. A recent paper noted that different-temperature baths lead not only to different equilibrium states but also to different equilibration rates. In some cases this means that temperature discrimination is better achieved by comparing the rates than the asymptotic states -- and should therefore be carried out at finite times rather than once equilibration is essentially complete. The theory wo…
Thermal equilibrium states are exponentially hard to distinguish at very low temperatures, making equilibrium quantum thermometry in this regime a formidable task. We present a thermometric scheme that circumvents this limitation, by using a two-level probe that does not thermalize with the sample whose temperature is measured. This is made possible thanks to a suitable interaction that couples the probe to the sample and to an auxiliary thermal bath known to be at a higher temperature. Provided a reasonable upper bound on the temperature of the sample, the resulting 'thermometric machine' dri…
Quantum thermometry exploits the high level of control in coherent devices to offer enhanced precision for temperature estimation. This highlights the need for constructing concrete estimation strategies. Of particular importance is collisional thermometry, where a series of ancillas are sent sequentially to probe the system's temperature. In this paper we put forth a complete framework for analyzing collisional thermometry using Bayesian inference. The approach is easily implementable and experimentally friendly. Moreover, it is guaranteed to always saturate the Cramer-Rao bound in the long-t…
Estimating the temperature of a cold quantum system is difficult. Usually, one measures a well-understood thermal state and uses that prior knowledge to infer its temperature. In contrast, we introduce a method of thermometry that assumes minimal knowledge of the state of a system and is potentially non-destructive. Our method uses a universal temperature-dependence of the quench dynamics of an initially thermal system coupled to a qubit probe that follows from the Tasaki-Crooks theorem for non-equilibrium work distributions. We provide examples for a cold-atom system, in which our thermometry…
The precise measurement of low temperatures is a challenging, important and fundamental task for quantum science. In particular, in-situ thermometry is highly desirable for cold atomic systems due to their potential for quantum simulation. Here we demonstrate that the temperature of a non-interacting Fermi gas can be accurately inferred from the non-equilibrium dynamics of impurities immersed within it, using an interferometric protocol and established experimental methods. Adopting tools from the theory of quantum parameter estimation, we show that our proposed scheme achieves optimal precisi…
When quantum information is spread over a system through nonclassical correlation, it makes retrieving information by local measurements difficult---making global measurement necessary for optimal parameter estimation. In this paper, we consider temperature estimation of a system in a Gibbs state and quantify the separation between the estimation performance of the global optimal measurement scheme and a greedy local measurement scheme by diagonal quantum discord. In a greedy local scheme, instead of global measurements, one performs sequential local measurement on subsystems, which is potenti…
Precise thermometry for quantum systems is important to the development of new technology, and understanding the ultimate limits to precision presents a fundamental challenge. It is well known that optimal thermometry requires projective measurements of the total energy of the sample. However, this is infeasible in even moderately-sized systems, where realistic energy measurements will necessarily involve some coarse graining. Here, we explore the precision limits for temperature estimation when only coarse-grained measurements are available. Utilizing tools from signal processing, we derive t…
Relativistic Quantum Thermometry in AdS Spacetime via Non-Markovian Temperature Sensing
Faculty of Sciences, Mohammed V University in Rabat（拉巴特穆罕默德五世大学理学院）；Centre of Physics and Mathematics, CPM, Faculty of Sciences, Mohammed V University in Rabat（拉巴特穆罕默德五世大学理学院物理与数学中心）
A paradigm shift in quantum thermometry is proposed. To date, thermometry has relied on local estimation, which is useful to reduce statistical fluctuations once the temperature is very well known. In order to estimate temperatures in cases where few measurement data or no substantial prior knowledge are available, we build instead a theory of global quantum thermometry. Based on scaling arguments, a mean logarithmic error is shown here to be the correct figure of merit for thermometry. Its full minimisation provides an operational and optimal rule to post-process measurements into a temperatu…
Controlling and measuring the temperature in different devices and platforms that operate in the quantum regime is, without any doubt, essential for any potential application. In this review, we report the most recent theoretical developments dealing with accurate estimation of very low temperatures in quantum systems. Together with the emerging experimental techniques and developments of measurement protocols, the theory of quantum thermometry will decisively impinge and shape the forthcoming quantum technologies. While current quantum thermometric methods differ greatly depending on the expe…
We show how the use of entanglement can enhance the precision of the detection of the Unruh effect with an accelerated probe. We use the Unruh-DeWitt model of a two-level atom interacting relativistically with a quantum field and treat the atom as an open quantum system to derive the master equation governing its evolution. By means of quantum state discrimination, we detect the accelerated motion of the atom by examining its time evolving state. It turns out that the optimal strategy for the detection of the Unruh effect, to which the accelerated atom is sensitive, involves letting the atom-t…
