We show that when a suitable entanglement generating unitary operator depending on a parameter is applied on N qubits in parallel, and an appropriate observable is measured, a precision of order 2 raised to the power (-N) in estimating the parameter may be achieved. This exponentially improves the precision achievable in classical and in quantum non-entangling parallel strategies. We propose a quantum-optics model of laser light interacting with an N-qubit system, say a polyatomic molecule, via a generalized Jaynes-Cummings interaction which, in principle, could achieve the exponentially enhanced precision.
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…
Quantum steering is an important correlation in quantum information theory. A recent work [Nat. Commun. 12, 2410 (2021)] showed that quantum steering is also useful for quantum metrology. Here, we extend the exploration of steering-enhanced quantum metrology from single noiseless phase shifts to superpositions of noisy phase shifts. As concrete examples, we consider a control system that manipulates a target system to pass through a superposition of either dephased or depolarized phase shifts channels. We show that using such superpositions of noisy phase shifts can suppress the effects of noi…
We provide efficient and intuitive tools for deriving bounds on achievable precision in quantum enhanced metrology based on the geometry of quantum channels and semi-definite programming. We show that when decoherence is taken into account, the maximal possible quantum enhancement amounts generically to a constant factor rather than quadratic improvement. We apply these tools to derive bounds for models of decoherence relevant for metrological applications including: dephasing,depolarization, spontaneous emission and photon loss.
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 metrology is supposed to significantly improve the precision of parameter estimation by utilizing suitable quantum resources. However, the predicted precision can be severely distorted by realistic noises. Here, we propose a control-enhanced quantum metrology scheme to defend against these noises for improving the metrology performance. Our scheme can automatically alter the parameter encoding dynamics with adjustable controls, thus leading to optimal resultant states that are less sensitive to the noises under consideration. As a demonstration, we numerically apply it to the problem o…
We propose and analyze a new approach based on parity-time ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetric microcavities with balanced gain and loss to enhance the performance of cavity-assisted metrology. We identify the conditions under which $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric microcavities allow to improve sensitivity beyond what is achievable in loss-only systems. We discuss its application to the detection of mechanical motion, and show that the sensitivity is significantly enhanced in the vicinity of the transition point from unbroken- to broken-$\mathcal{PT}$ regimes. We believe that our results open a new direction …
We introduce the concept of entanglement enhanced interferometry from the viewpoint of the detected photons. The standard quantum limit is achieved when sequentially detected photons are assumed to be in an uncorrelated product state. However when we access the correlations between the detected photons that existed before the interferometer it becomes clear that entanglement enhanced measurement beyond the quantum limit could be achieved independent of loss. We describe possible realisations of this post-measurement entanglement detection using a small array of spin photon entangling gates. We…
Quantum metrology plays a fundamental role in many scientific areas. However, the complexity of engineering entangled probes and the external noise raise technological barriers for realizing the expected precision of the to-be-estimated parameter with given resources. Here, we address this problem by introducing adjustable controls into the encoding process and then utilizing a hybrid quantum-classical approach to automatically optimize the controls online. Our scheme does not require any complex or intractable off-line design, and it can inherently correct certain unitary errors during the le…
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…
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…
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…
These notes summarize lectures given at the 2019 Les Houches summer school on Quantum Information Machines. They describe and review an application of quantum metrology concepts to searches for ultralight dark matter. In particular, for ultralight dark matter that couples as a weak classical force to a laboratory harmonic oscillator, quantum squeezing benefits experiments in which the mass of the dark matter particle is unknown. This benefit is present even if the oscillatory dark matter signal is much more coherent than the harmonic oscillator that it couples to, as is the case for microwave …
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…
Ramsey interferometry is routinely used in quantum metrology for the most sensitive measurements of optical clock frequencies. Spontaneous decay to the electromagnetic vacuum ultimately limits the interrogation time and thus sets a lower bound to the optimal frequency sensitivity. In dense ensembles of two-level systems the presence of collective effects such as superradiance and dipole-dipole interaction tends to decrease the sensitivity even further. We show that by a redesign of the Ramsey-pulse sequence to include different rotations of individual spins that effectively fold the collective…
The main obstacle for practical quantum technology is the noise, which can induce the decoherence and destroy the potential quantum advantages. The fluctuation of a field, which induces the dephasing of the system, is one of the most common noises and widely regarded as detrimental to quantum technologies. Here we show, contrary to the conventional belief, the fluctuation can be used to improve the precision limits in quantum metrology for the estimation of various parameters. Specifically, we show that for the estimation of the direction and rotating frequency of a field, the achieved precisi…
We explore the quantum metrology in an optical molecular system coupled to two environments with different temperatures, using a quantum master equation beyond secular approximation. We discover that the steady-state coherence originating from and sustained by the nonequilibrium condition can enhance quantum metrology. We also study the quantitative measures of the nonequilibrium condition in terms of the curl flux, heat current and entropy production at the steady state. They are found to grow with temperature difference. However, an apparent paradox arises considering the contrary behaviors …
We present a general framework to study the simultaneous estimation of multiple phases in the presence of noise as a discretized model for phase imaging. This approach can lead to nontrivial bounds of the precision for multiphase estimation. Our results show that simultaneous estimation (SE) of multiple phases is always better than individual estimation (IE) of each phase even in noisy environment. However with $d$ being the number of phases, the $O(d)$ advantage in the variance of the estimation, with which SE outperforms IE schemes for noiseless processes, may disappear asymptotically. When …
We demonstrate that a many-body nonlocality is a resource for ultra-precise metrology. This result is achieved by linking the sensitivity of a quantum sensor with a combination of many-body correlation functions that witness the nonlocality. We illustrate our findings with some prominent examples---a collection of spins forming an Ising chain and a gas of ultra-cold atoms in any two-mode configuration.
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…
The spectral properties of an interacting many-body system may display critical character and have potential applications in precision metrology. Here, we demonstrate such many-body enhanced metrology for microwave (MW) electric fields in a non-equilibrium Rydberg atomic gas. Near criticality the high sensitivity of Rydberg atoms to external MW electric fields, combined with many-body enhancement induces significant changes in the optical transmission. We quantify this behavior using the Fisher information. For continuous optical transmission at the critical point, the Fisher information is th…
We analyze the performance of a generalized Kitaev's phase estimation algorithm where N phase gates, acting on $M$ qubits prepared in a product state, may be distributed in an arbitrary way. Unlike the standard algorithm, where the mean square error scales as 1/N, the optimal generalizations offer the Heisenberg $1/N^2$ error scaling and we show that they are in fact very close to the fundamental Bayesian estimation bound. We also demonstrate that the optimality of the algorithm breaks down when losses are taken into account, in which case the performance is inferior to the optimal entanglemen…
Quantum Metrology is one of the most promising application of quantum technologies. The aim of this research field is the estimation of unknown parameters exploiting quantum resources, whose application can lead to enhanced performances with respect to classical strategies. Several physical quantum systems can be employed to develop quantum sensors, and photonic systems represent ideal probes for a large number of metrological tasks. Here we review the basic concepts behind quantum metrology and then focus on the application of photonic technology for this task, with particular attention to ph…
Probabilistic metrology attempts to improve parameter estimation by occasionally reporting an excellent estimate and the rest of the time either guessing or doing nothing at all. Here we show that probabilistic metrology can never improve quantum limits on estimation of a single parameter, both on average and asymptotically in number of trials, if performance is judged relative to mean-square estimation error. We extend the result by showing that for a finite number of trials, the probability of obtaining better estimates using probabilistic metrology, as measured by mean-square error, decreas…
Quantum-enhanced metrology aims to estimate an unknown parameter such that the precision scales better than the shot-noise bound. Single-shot adaptive quantum-enhanced metrology (AQEM) is a promising approach that uses feedback to tweak the quantum process according to previous measurement outcomes. Techniques and formalism for the adaptive case are quite different from the usual non-adaptive quantum metrology approach due to the causal relationship between measurements and outcomes. We construct a formal framework for AQEM by modeling the procedure as a decision-making process, and we derive …
We use multi-pulse dynamical decoupling to increase the coherence lifetime (T2) of large numbers of nitrogen-vacancy (NV) electronic spins in room temperature diamond, thus enabling scalable applications of multi-spin quantum information processing and metrology. We realize an order-of-magnitude extension of the NV multi-spin T2 for diamond samples with widely differing spin environments. For samples with nitrogen impurity concentration <~1 ppm, we find T2 > 2 ms, comparable to the longest coherence time reported for single NV centers, and demonstrate a ten-fold enhancement in NV multi-spin se…
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…
I consider the role of detection noise in quantum-enhanced metrology in collective spin systems, and derive a fundamental bound for the maximum obtainable sensitivity for a given level of added detection noise. I then present an interaction-based readout utilising the commonly used one-axis twisting scheme that approaches this bound for states generated via several commonly considered methods of generating quantum enhancement, such as one-axis twisting, two-axis counter-twisting, twist-and-turn squeezing, quantum non-demolition measurements, and adiabatically scanning through a quantum phase t…
We show that continuous quantum nondemolition (QND) measurement of an atomic ensemble is able to improve the precision of frequency estimation even in the presence of independent dephasing acting on each atom. We numerically simulate the dynamics of an ensemble with up to N = 150 atoms initially prepared in a (classical) spin coherent state, and we show that, thanks to the spin squeezing dynamically generated by the measurement, the information obtainable from the continuous photocurrent scales superclassically with respect to the number of atoms N. We provide evidence that such superclassical…
We show why and when entanglement is needed for quantum-enhanced precision measurements, and which type of entanglement is useful. We give a simple, intuitive construction that shows how entanglement transforms parallel estimation strategies into sequential ones of same precision. We employ this argument to generalize conventional quantum metrology, to identify a class of noise whose effects can be easily managed, and to treat the case of indistinguishable probes (such as interferometry with light).
Fock states are a fundamental resource for many quantum technologies such as quantum metrology. While much progress has been made in single-photon source technologies, preparing Fock states with large photon number remains challenging. We present and analyze a bootstrapped approach for non-deterministically preparing large photon-number Fock states by iteratively fusing smaller Fock states on a beamsplitter. We show that by employing state recycling we are able to exponentially improve the preparation rate over conventional schemes, allowing the efficient preparation of large Fock states. The …
We address the study of quantum metrology enhanced by indefinite causal order, demonstrating a quadratic advantage in the estimation of the product of two average displacements in a continuous variable system. We prove that no setup where the displacements are probed in a fixed order can have root-mean-square error vanishing faster than the Heisenberg limit 1/N, where N is the number of displacements contributing to the average. In stark contrast, we show that a setup that probes the displacements in a superposition of two alternative orders yields a root-mean-square error vanishing with super…
The accumulation of quantum phase in response to a signal is the central mechanism of quantum sensing, as such, loss of phase information presents a fundamental limitation. For this reason approaches to extend quantum coherence in the presence of noise are actively being explored. Here we experimentally protect a room-temperature hybrid spin register against environmental decoherence by performing repeated quantum error correction whilst maintaining sensitivity to signal fields. We use a long-lived nuclear spin to correct multiple phase errors on a sensitive electron spin in diamond and realiz…
Enhanced Quantum Metrology via Saddle-Point Scrambling in Phase Space
Graduate School of China Academy of Engineering Physics（中国工程物理研究院研究生院）；Center for Quantum Sciences and School of Physics, Northeast Normal University（东北师范大学量子科学中心与物理学院）
Nitrogen-vacancy ensembles promise an unprecedented combination of sensitivity and resolution for magnetic field sensing under ambient conditions. However, their full sensing potential is limited by the inhomogeneous degradation of their collective coherence, while dynamical-decoupling limits sensing to the detection of AC-fields. Here we propose using the recently demonstrated cavity-protection effect for room-temperature, ensemble-based DC metrology. We identify a parameter space where strong-coupling can persist at room temperature and where the dressed states are limited solely by the deph…
