The field of quantum metrology seeks to apply quantum techniques and/or resources to classical sensing approaches with the goal of enhancing the precision in the estimation of a parameter beyond what can be achieved with classical resources. Theoretically, the fundamental minimum uncertainty in the estimation of a parameter for a given probing state is bounded by the quantum Cramér-Rao bound. From a practical perspective, it is necessary to find physical measurements that can saturate this fundamental limit and to show experimentally that it is possible to perform measurements with the required precision to do so. Here we perform experiments that saturate the quantum Cramér-Rao bound for transmission estimation over a wide range of transmissions when probing the system under study with a bright two-mode squeezed state. To properly take into account the imperfections in the generation of the quantum state, we extend our previous theoretical results to incorporate the measured properties of the generated quantum state. For our largest transmission level of 84%, we show a 62% reduction over the optimal classical protocol in the variance in transmission estimation when probing with a bright two-mode squeezed state with 8 dB of intensity-difference squeezing. Given that transmission estimation is an integral part of many sensing protocols, such as plasmonic sensing, spectroscopy, calibration of the quantum efficiency of detectors, etc., the results presented promise to have a significant impact on a number of applications in various fields of research.
The author studies the Cramer-Rao type bound by a linear programming approach. By this approach, he found a necessary and sufficient condition that the Cramer-Rao type bound is attained by a random measurement. In a spin 1/2 system, this condition is satisfied.
The author studies the Cramér-Rao type bound by a linear programming approach. By this approach, he found a necessary and sufficient condition that the Cramér-Rao type bound is attained by a random measurement. In a spin 1/2 system, this condition is satisfied.
We calculate the Holevo Cramér-Rao bound for estimation of the displacement experienced by one mode of an two-mode squeezed vacuum state with squeezing r and find that it is equal to 4exp(-2r). This equals the sum of the mean squared error obtained from a dual homodyne measurement, indicating that the bound is tight and that the dual homodyne measurement is optimal.
In this letter, we show that for all the so-called path-symmetric states, the measurement of parity of photon number at the output of an optical interferometer achieves maximal phase sensitivity at the quantum Cramer-Rao bound. Such optimal phase sensitivity with parity is attained at a suitable bias phase, which can be determined a priori. Our scheme is applicable for local phase estimation.
In this paper, new methodology -- direct approach -- for the determination of the attainable CR type bound of the pure state model, is proposed and successfully applied to the wide variety of pure state models, for example, the 2-dimensional arbitrary model, the coherent model with arbitrary dimension. When the weight matrix is $SLD$ Fisher information, the bound is determined for arbitrary pure state models. Manifestation of complex structure in the Cramer-Rao type bound is also discussed.
Enhancing the precision of a measurement requires maximizing the information that can be gained about the quantity of interest from probing a system. For optical based measurements, such an enhancement can be achieved through two approaches, increasing the number of photons used to interrogate the system and using quantum states of light to increase the amount of quantum Fisher information gained per photon. Here we consider the use of quantum states of light with a large number of photons, namely the bright single-mode and two-mode squeezed states, that take advantage of both of these approac…
Recently, a widely-used computation expression for quantum Fisher information was shown to be discontinuous at the parameter points where the rank of the parametric density operator changes. The quantum Cramér-Rao bound can be violated on such singular parameter points if one uses this computation expression for quantum Fisher information. We point out that the discontinuity of the computation expression of quantum Fisher information is accompanied with the unboundedness of the symmetric logarithmic derivation operators, based on which the quantum Fisher information is formally defined and the…
We experimentally analyzed the statistical errors in quantum-state estimation and examined whether their lower bound, which is derived from the Cramer-Rao inequality, can be truly attained or not. In the experiments, polarization states of bi-photons produced via spontaneous parametric down-conversion were estimated employing tomographic measurements. Using a new estimation strategy based on Akaike's information criterion, we demonstrated that the errors actually approach the lower bound, while they fail to approach it using the conventional estimation strategy.
In a unified viewpoint in quantum channel estimation, we compare the Cramer-Rao and the mini-max approaches, which gives the Bayesian bound in the group covariant model. For this purpose, we introduce the local asymptotic mini-max bound, whose maximum is shown to be equal to the asymptotic limit of the mini-max bound. It is shown that the local asymptotic mini-max bound is strictly larger than the Cramer-Rao bound in the phase estimation case while the both bounds coincide when the minimum mean square error decreases with the order O(1/n). We also derive a sufficient condition for that the min…
The internal disorder of the two-dimensional confined hydrogenic atom is numerically studied in terms of the confinement radius for the 1\textit{s}, 2\textit{s}, 2\textit{p} and 3\textit{d} quantum states by means of the statistical Crámer-Rao complexity measure. First, the confinement dependence of the variance and the Fisher information of the position and momentum spreading of its electron distribution are computed and discussed. Then, the Crámer-Rao complexity measure (which quantifies the combined balance of the charge concentration around the mean value and the gradient content of the el…
Estimation of parameters is a pivotal task throughout science and technology. Quantum Cramér-Rao bound provides a fundamental limit of precision allowed to achieve under quantum theory. For closed quantum systems, it has been shown how the estimation precision depends on the underlying dynamics. Here, we propose a general formulation for metrology scenarios in open quantum systems, aiming to relate the precision more directly to properties of the underlying dynamics. This feature may be employed to enhance an estimation precision, e.g., by quantum control techniques. Specifically, we derive a …
The quantum Cramér-Rao bound sets a fundamental limit on the accuracy of unbiased parameter estimation in quantum systems, relating the uncertainty in determining a parameter to the inverse of the quantum Fisher information. We experimentally demonstrate near saturation of the quantum Cramér-Rao bound in the phase estimation of a solid-state spin system, provided by a nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond. This is achieved by comparing the experimental uncertainty in phase estimation with an independent measurement of the related quantum Fisher information. The latter is independently extracted f…
The quantum Cramér-Rao bound (QCRB) provides an ultimate precision limit allowed by quantum mechanics in parameter estimation. Given any quantum state dependent on a single parameter, there is always a positive-operator valued measurement (POVM) saturating the QCRB. However, the QCRB-saturating POVM cannot always be implemented efficiently, especially in multipartite systems. In this paper, we show that the POVM based on local operations and classical communication (LOCC) is QCRB-saturating for arbitrary pure states or rank-two mixed states with varying probability distributions over fixed eig…
Precision measurements with quantum systems rely on our ability to trace the differences between experimental signals to variations in unknown physical parameters. In this Letter we derive the Fisher information and the ensuing Cramer-Rao sensitivity limit for parameter estimation by continuous measurements on an open quantum system. We illustrate our theory by application to resonance fluorescence from a laser driven two-state atom and we show that photon counting and homodyne detection records yield different sensitivity to the atomic parameters, while none of them exceed our general result.
In quantum metrology, the Holevo Cramér-Rao bound has attracted renewed interest in recent years due to its superiority over the Helstrom Cramér-Rao bound and its asymptotic attainability for multi-parameter estimation. Its evaluation, however, is often much more difficult than that of the Helstrom version, calling into question the actual improvement offered by the Holevo CRB and whether it is worth the trouble. Here I prove that the Holevo bound is at most thrice the Helstrom version, so the improvement must be limited. The result also shows that the Helstrom version remains a pretty good bo…
In multiparameter quantum metrology, the weighted-arithmetic-mean error of estimation is often used as a scalar cost function to be minimized during design optimization. However, other types of mean error can reveal different facets of permissible error combination. By introducing the weighted $f$-mean of estimation error and quantum Fisher information, we derive various quantum Cramér-Rao bounds on mean error in a very general form and also give their refined versions with complex quantum Fisher information matrices. We show that the geometric- and harmonic-mean quantum Cramér-Rao bounds can …
For decoherence processes induced by weak interactions with the environment, a general quantum channel with one noise parameter has been formulated. This channel is called low-noise channel and very useful for investigating the parameter estimation in the leading order. In this paper, we formulate the low-noise channel with multiple unknown parameters in order to address the simultaneous achievability of the Cram{é}r-Rao bound for the parameters estimation. In general, the simultaneous achievement of the Cram{é}r-Rao bound for multi-parameter estimations suffers from non-commutativity of optim…
Many results in the quantum metrology literature use the Cramér-Rao bound and the Fisher information to compare different quantum estimation strategies. However, there are several assumptions that go into the construction of these tools, and these limitations are sometimes not taken into account. While a strategy that utilises this method can considerably simplify the problem and is valid asymptotically, to have a rigorous and fair comparison we need to adopt a more general approach. In this work we use a methodology based on Bayesian inference to understand what happens when the Cramér-Rao bo…
In collisional thermometry, a system in contact with the thermal bath is probed by a stream of ancillas. Coherences and collective measurements were shown to improve the Fisher information in some parameter regimes, for a stream of independent and identically prepared (i.i.d.) ancillas in some specific states [Seah et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 180602 (2019)]. Here we refine the analysis of this metrological advantage by optimising over the possible input ancilla states, also for block-i.i.d.~states of block size b=2. For both an indirect measurement interaction and a coherent energy exchange chan…
This is a tutorial aimed at illustrating some recent developments in quantum parameter estimation beyond the Cramèr-Rao bound, as well as their applications in quantum metrology. Our starting point is the observation that there are situations in classical and quantum metrology where the unknown parameter of interest, besides determining the state of the probe, is also influencing the operation of the measuring devices, e.g. the range of possible outcomes. In those cases, non-regular statistical models may appear, for which the Cramèr-Rao theorem does not hold. In turn, the achievable precision…
Quantum metrology derives its capabilities from the careful employ of quantum resources for carrying out measurements. This advantage, however, relies on refined data postprocessing, assessed based on the variance of the estimated parameter. When Bayesian techniques are adopted, more elements become available for assessing the quality of the estimation. Here we adopt generalized classical Cramér-Rao bounds for looking in detail into a phase-estimation experiment performed with quantum light. In particular, we show that the third-order absolute moment can give a superior capability in revealing…
We formulate multiparameter quantum estimation in the parametric and semiparametric setting. While the Holevo Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) requires no substantial modifications in moving from the former to the latter, we generalize the Helstrom CRB appropriately. We show that the Holevo CRB cannot be greater than twice the generalized Helstrom CRB. We also present a tighter, intermediate, bound. Finally, we show that for parameters encoded in the first moments of a Gaussian state there always exists a Gaussian measurement that gives a classical Fisher information matrix that is one-half of the quant…
A usual assumption in quantum estimation is that the unknown parameter labels the possible states of the system, while it influences neither the sample space of outcomes nor the measurement aimed at extracting information on the parameter itself. This assumption is crucial to prove the quantum Cramér-Rao theorem and to introduce the quantum Fisher information as an upper bound to the Fisher information of any possible measurement. However, there are relevant estimation problems where this assumption does not hold and an alternative approach should be developed to find the genuine ultimate boun…
The quantum Fisher information constrains the achievable precision in parameter estimation via the quantum Cramér-Rao bound, which has attracted much attention in Hermitian systems since the 60s of the last century. However, less attention has been paid to non-Hermitian systems. In this Letter, working with different logarithmic operators, we derive two previously unknown expressions for quantum Fisher information, and two Cramér-Rao bounds lower than the well-known one are found for non-Hermitian systems. These lower bounds are due to the merit of non-Hermitian observable and it can be unders…
Quantum number-path entanglement is a resource for super-sensitive quantum metrology and in particular provides for sub-shotnoise or even Heisenberg-limited sensitivity. However, such number-path entanglement has thought to have been resource intensive to create in the first place --- typically requiring either very strong nonlinearities, or nondeterministic preparation schemes with feed-forward, which are difficult to implement. Recently in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 170802 (2015)] we showed that number-path entanglement from a BosonSampling inspired interferometer can be used to beat the shot-no…
It is challenged only recently that the precision attainable in any measurement of a physical parameter is fundamentally limited by the quantum Cramér-Rao Bound (QCRB). Here, targeting at measuring parameters in strongly dissipative systems, we propose an innovative measurement scheme called {\it dissipative adiabatic measurement} and theoretically show that it can beat the QCRB. Unlike projective measurements, our measurement scheme, though consuming more time, does not collapse the measured state and, more importantly, yields the expectation value of an observable as its measurement outcome,…
Only with the simultaneous estimation of multiple parameters are the quantum aspects of metrology fully revealed. This is due to the incompatibility of observables. The fundamental bound for multi-parameter quantum estimation is the Holevo Cramér-Rao bound (HCRB) whose evaluation has so far remained elusive. For finite-dimensional systems we recast its evaluation as a semidefinite program, with reduced size for rank-deficient states. We use this result to study phase and loss estimation in optical interferometry and three-dimensional magnetometry with noisy multi-qubit systems. For the former,…
Multimode Gaussian quantum light, including multimode squeezed and/or multipartite quadrature entangled light, is a very general and powerful quantum resource with promising applications to quantum information processing and metrology involving continuous variables. In this paper, we determine the ultimate sensitivity in the estimation of any parameter when the information about this parameter is encoded in such Gaussian light, irrespective of the exact information extraction protocol used in the estimation. We then show that, for a given set of available quantum resources, the most economical…
We describe a compact and reliable method to calculate the Fisher information for the estimation of a dynamical parameter in a continuously measured linear Gaussian quantum system. Unlike previous methods in the literature, which involve the numerical integration of a stochastic master equation for the corresponding density operator in a Hilbert space of infinite dimension, the formulas here derived depends only on the evolution of first and second moments of the quantum states, and thus can be easily evaluated without the need of any approximation. We also present some basic but physically me…
SU(1,1) interferometers, based on the usage of nonlinear elements, are superior to passive interferometers in phase sensitivity. However, the SU(1,1) interferometer cannot make full use of photons carrying phase information as the second nonlinear element annihilates some of the photons inside. Here, we focus on improving phase sensitivity and propose a new protocol based on a modified SU(1,1) interferometer, where the second nonlinear element is replaced by a beam splitter. We utilize two coherent states as inputs and implement balanced homodyne measurement at the output. Our analysis suggest…
Quantum-enhanced phase estimation paves the way to ultra-precision sensing and is of great realistic significance. In this paper we investigate theoretically the estimation of a second-order nonlinear phase shift using a coherent state and parity measurement. A numerical expression is derived, the resolution and the sensitivity of parity signal are contrasted to linear phase estimation protocol, and the signal visibility is analyzed. Additionally, by virtue of phase-averaging approach to eliminate any hidden resources, we make an attempt at unveiling the low-down on the fundamental sensitivity…
Using differential geometry, I derive a form of the Bayesian Cramér-Rao bound that remains invariant under reparametrization. With the invariant formulation at hand, I find the optimal and naturally invariant bound among the Gill-Levit family of bounds. By assuming that the prior probability density is the square of a wavefunction, I also express the bounds in terms of functionals that are quadratic with respect to the wavefunction and its gradient. The problem of finding an unfavorable prior to tighten the bound for minimax estimation is shown, in a special case, to be equivalent to finding t…
We study quantum-limited 3D magnetometry using two qubits. Two qubits form the smallest multi-qubit system for 3D magnetometry, the simultaneous estimation of three phases, as it is impossible with a single qubit. We provide an analytical expression for the Holevo-Cramér-Rao bound (HCRB),the fundamental attainable quantum bound of multiparameter estimation, for 3D magnetometry using two-qubit pure states and show its attainability by rank-1 projective measurements. We also examine the attainability of the HCRB in the presence of dephasing noise using numerical methods. While attaining the HCRB…
Hybrid Cramér-Rao bound for Quantum Bayes-Point Estimation with Nuisance Parameters
Graduate School of Informatics and Engineering, The University of Electro-Communications (UEC)（电气通信大学信息与工程研究生院）；Institute for Advanced Science, The University of Electro-Communications (UEC)（电气通信大学高等科学研究所）
How precisely can we estimate cosmological parameters by performing a quantum measurement on a cosmological quantum state? In quantum estimation theory the variance of an unbiased parameter estimator is bounded from below by the inverse of measurement-dependent Fisher information and ultimately by quantum Fisher information, which is the maximization of the former over all positive operator valued measurements. Such bound is known as the quantum Cramer-Rao bound. We consider the evolution of a massless scalar field with Bunch-Davies vacuum in a spatially flat FLRW spacetime, which results in a…
