Scheme for optimal spin state estimation is considered in analogy with phase detection in interferometry. Recently reported coherent measurements yielding the average fidelity (N+1)/(N+2) for N particle system corresponds to the standard limit of phase resolution 1/\sqrt{N}. It provides the bound for incoherent measurements when each particle is detected separately and information is used optimally. For specific states, improvement up to the value 1/N is possible in quantum theory. The best results are obtained combining sequentially coherent measurements on fractional groups of particles.
We present an interferometric scheme producing orbital entanglement in a quantum Hall system upon electron-hole pair emission via tunneling. The proposed setup is an electronic version of the optical interferometer proposed by Cabello et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 040401 (2009)], and is feasible with present technology. It requires single-channel propagation and a single primary source. We discuss the creation of entanglement and its detection by the violation of a Bell inequality.
Interferometry with quantum light is known to provide enhanced precision for estimating a single phase. However, depending on the parameters involved, the quantum limit for the simultaneous estimation of multiple parameters may not attainable, leading to trade-offs in the attainable precisions. Here we study the simultaneous estimation of two parameters related to optical interferometry: phase and loss, using a fixed number of photons. We derive a trade-off in the estimation of these two parameters which shows that, in contrast to single-parameter estimation, it is impossible to design a strat…
We propose classical interferometry with low-intensity thermal radiation for the estimation of nonclassical independent Gaussian processes in material samples. We generally determine the mean square error of the phase-independent parameters of an unknown Gaussian process, considering a noisy source of radiation the phase of which is not locked to the pump of the process. We verify the sufficiency of passive optical elements in the interferometer, active optical elements do not improve the quality of the estimation. We also prove the robustness of the method against the noise and loss in both i…
We apply the theory of semiparametric estimation to a Hong-Ou-Mandel interference experiment with a spectrally entangled two-photon state generated by spontaneous parametric downconversion. Thanks to the semiparametric approach we can evaluate the Cramér-Rao bound and find an optimal estimator for a particular parameter of interest without assuming perfect knowledge of the two-photon wave function, formally treated as an infinity of nuisance parameters. In particular, we focus on the estimation of the Hermite-Gauss components of the marginal symmetrised wavefunction, whose Fourier transform go…
Estimating multiple parameters simultaneously is of great importance to measurement science and application. For a single parameter, atomic Ramsey interferometry (or equivalently optical Mach-Zehnder interferometry) is capable of providing the precision at the standard quantum limit (SQL) using unentangled probe states as input. In such an interferometer, the first beam splitter represented by unitary transformation $U$ generates a quantum phase sensing superposition state, while the second beam splitter $U^{-1}$ recombines the phase encoded paths to realize interferometric sensing in terms of…
We address phase-shift estimation by means of squeezed vacuum probe and homodyne detection. We analyze Bayesian estimator, which is known to asymptotically saturate the classical Cramer-Rao bound to the variance, and discuss convergence looking at the a posteriori distribution as the number of measurements increases. We also suggest two feasible adaptive methods, acting on the squeezing parameter and/or the homodyne local oscillator phase, which allow to optimize homodyne detection and approach the ultimate bound to precision imposed by the quantum Cramer-Rao theorem. The performances of our t…
Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometry takes advantage of the quantum nature of two-photon interference to increase the resolution of precision measurements of time-delays. Relying on few-photon probe states, this approach is applicable also in cases of extremely sensible samples and it achieves attosecond (nanometer path length) scale resolution, which is relevant to cell biology and two-dimensional materials. Here, we theoretically analyze how the precision of Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometers can be significantly improved by engineering the spectral distribution of two-photon probe states. In particula…
We investigated the estimation of an unknown Gaussian process (containing displacement, squeezing and phase-shift) applied to a matter system. The state of the matter system is not directly measured; instead, we measure an optical mode which interacts with the system. We propose an interferometric setup exploiting a beam-splitter-type of light-matter interaction with homodyne detectors and two methods of estimation. We demonstrate the superiority of the interferometric setup over alternative non-interferometric schemes. Importantly, we show that even limited coupling strength and a noisy matte…
Ramsey interferometry allows the estimation of the phase $ϕ$ of rotation of the pseudospin vector of an ensemble of two-state quantum systems. For $ϕ$ small, the noise-to-signal ratio scales as the spin-squeezing parameter $ξ$, with $ξ<1$ possible for an entangled ensemble. However states with minimum $ξ$ are not optimal for single-shot measurements of an arbitrary phase. We define a phase-squeezing parameter, $ζ$, which is an appropriate figure-of-merit for this case. We show that (unlike the states that minimize $ξ$), the states that minimize $ζ$ can be created by evolving an unentangled sta…
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）
A major obstacle to attain the fundamental precision limit of the phase estimation in an interferometry is the identification and implementation of the optimal measurement. Here we demonstrate that this can be accomplished by the use of three conventional measurements among interferometers with Bayesian estimation techniques. Conditions that hold for the precision limit to be attained with these measurements are obtained by explicitly calculating the Fisher information. Remarkably, these conditions are naturally satisfied in most interferometric experiments. We apply our results to an experime…
We demonstrate that memory in an $N$-qubit system subjected to decoherence, is a potential resource for the slow-down of the entanglement decay. We show that this effect can be used to retain the sub shot-noise sensitivity of the parameter estimation in quantum interferometry. We calculate quantum Fisher information, which sets the ultimate bound for the precision of the estimation. We also derive the sensitivity of such a noisy interferometer, when the phase is either estimated from the measurements of the population imbalance or from the one-body density.
In interferometry, sub-Heisenberg strategies claim to achieve a phase estimation error smaller than the inverse of the mean number of photons employed (Heisenberg bound). Here we show that one can achieve a comparable precision without performing any measurement, just using the large prior information that sub-Heisenberg strategies require. For uniform prior (i.e. no prior information), we prove that these strategies cannot achieve more than a fixed gain of about 1.73 over Heisenberg-limited interferometry. Analogous results hold for arbitrary single-mode prior distributions. These results ext…
We discuss the role of an external phase reference in quantum interferometry. We point out inconsistencies in the literature with regard to the use of the quantum Fisher information (QFI) in phase estimation interferometric schemes. We discuss the interferometric schemes with and without an external phase reference and show a proper way to use QFI in both situations.
Atomic (qubit) and optical or microwave (modal) phase-estimation protocols are placed on the same footing in terms of quantum-circuit diagrams. Circuit equivalences are used to demonstrate the equivalence of protocols that achieve the Heisenberg limit by employing entangled superpositions of Fock states, such as N00N states. The key equivalences are those that disentangle a circuit so that phase information is written exclusively on a mode or modes or on a qubit. The Fock-state-superposition phase-estimation circuits are converted to use entangled coherent-state superpositions; the resulting p…
We analyse the effect of decoherence and noise on quantum Fourier transform interferometry, in which a boson sampling photonic network is used to measure optical phase gradients. This novel type of metrology is shown to be robust against phase decoherence. One can also measure gradients using lower order correlations without substantial degradation. Our results involve estimation of up to a 100 x 100 matrix permanent.
We characterize operationally meaningful quantum gains in a paradigmatic model of lossless multiple-phase interferometry and stress insufficiency of the analysis based solely on the concept of quantum Fisher information. We show that the advantage of the optimal simultaneous estimation scheme amounts to a constant factor improvement when compared with schemes where each phase is estimated separately -- contrary to a widely cited results claiming a better precision scaling in terms of the number of phases involved.
The sensitivity in optical interferometry is strongly affected by losses during the signal propagation or at the detection stage. The optimal quantum states of the probing signals in the presence of loss were recently found. However, in many cases of practical interest, their associated accuracy is worse than the one obtainable without employing quantum resources (e.g. entanglement and squeezing) but neglecting the detector's loss. Here we detail an experiment that can reach the latter even in the presence of imperfect detectors: it employs a phase-sensitive amplification of the signals after …
We give a detailed discussion of optimal quantum states for optical two-mode interferometry in the presence of photon losses. We derive analytical formulae for the precision of phase estimation obtainable using quantum states of light with a definite photon number and prove that maximization of the precision is a convex optimization problem. The corresponding optimal precision, i.e. the lowest possible uncertainty, is shown to beat the standard quantum limit thus outperforming classical interferometry. Furthermore, we discuss more general inputs: states with indefinite photon number and states…
It is shown that the condition for achieving the quantum Cramer-Rao bound of phase estimation in conventional two-path interferometers is that the state is symmetric with regard to an (unphysical) exchange of the two paths. Since path symmetry is conserved under phase shifts, the maximal phase sensitivity can be achieved at arbitrary bias phases, indicating that path symmetric states can achieve their quantum Cramer-Rao bound in Bayesian estimates of a completely unknown phase.
We investigate phase and frequency estimation with different measurement strategies under the effect of collective phase noise. First, we consider the standard linear estimation scheme and present an experimentally realisable optimization of the initial probe states by collective rotations. We identify the optimal rotation angle for different measurement times. Second, we show that sub-shot noise sensitivity - up to the Heisenberg limit - can be reached in presence of collective phase noise by using differential interferometry, where one part of the system is used to monitor the noise. For thi…
Multiparameter estimation, which aims to simultaneously determine multiple parameters in the same measurement procedure, attracts extensive interests in measurement science and technologies. Here, we propose a multimode many-body quantum interferometry for simultaneously estimating linear and quadratic Zeeman coefficients via an ensemble of spinor atoms. Different from the scheme with individual atoms, by using an $N$-atom multimode GHZ state, the measurement precisions of the two parameters can simultaneously attain the Heisenberg limit, and they respectively depend on the hyperfine spin numb…
We propose a Ramsey interferometry experiment using an entangled state of N atoms to reach the Heisenberg limit for the estimation of an atomic phase shift if the atom number parity is perfectly determined. In a more realistic situation, due to statistical fluctuations of the atom source and the finite detection efficiency, the parity is unknown. We then achieve about half the Heisenberg limit. The scheme involves an ensemble of circular Rydberg atoms which dispersively interact successively with two initially empty microwave cavities. The scheme does not require very high-Q cavities. An exper…
We study interferometry with Gaussian states and show that an ancilla-assisted scheme outperforms coherent state interferometry for all levels of loss. We also compare the ancilla-assisted scheme to other interferometric schemes involving squeezing, and show that it is the most advantage in the high-loss, high photon-number regime. In fact, in the presence of high loss, it out-performs many other strategies proposed to date. We find the optimal measurement observable for each scheme discussed. We also find that with the appropriate measurement, the achievable precision of the proposal by Caves…
By using a systematic optimization approach we determine quantum states of light with definite photon number leading to the best possible precision in optical two mode interferometry. Our treatment takes into account the experimentally relevant situation of photon losses. Our results thus reveal the benchmark for precision in optical interferometry. Although this boundary is generally worse than the Heisenberg limit, we show that the obtained precision beats the standard quantum limit thus leading to a significant improvement compared to classical interferometers. We furthermore discuss altern…
The performance of photonic $N00N$ states, propagating in an attenuating medium, is analyzed with respect to phase estimation. It is shown that, for $N00N$ states propagating through a lossy medium, the Heisenberg limit is never achieved. It is also shown that, for a given value of $N$, a signal comprised of an attenuated separable state of $N$ photons will actually produce a better phase estimate than will a signal comprised of an equally attenuated $N00N$ state, unless the transmittance of the medium is very high. This is a consequence of the need to utilize measurement operators appropriate…
Quantum interferometry uses quantum resources to improve phase estimation with respect to classical methods. Here we propose and theoretically investigate a new quantum interferometric scheme based on three-dimensional waveguide devices. These can be implemented by femtosecond laser waveguide writing, recently adopted for quantum applications. In particular, multiarm interferometers include "tritter" and "quarter" as basic elements, corresponding to the generalization of a beam splitter to a 3- and 4-port splitter, respectively. By injecting Fock states in the input ports of such interferomete…
A statistical distinguishability based on relative entropy characterises the fitness of quantum states for phase estimation. This criterion is employed in the context of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer and used to interpolate between two regimes, of local and global phase distinguishability. The scaling of distinguishability in these regimes with photon number is explored for various quantum states. It emerges that local distinguishability is dependent on a discrepancy between quantum and classical rotational energy. Our analysis demonstrates that the Heisenberg limit is the true upper limit for…
Analytic higher-order momentum correlation functions associated with the time-of-flight spectroscopy of three ultracold fermionic atoms singly-confined in a linear three-well optical trap are presented, corresponding to the W- and Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger-type (GHZ) states that belong to characteristic classes of tripartite entanglement and represent the strong-interaction regime captured by a three-site Heisenberg Hamiltonian. The methodology introduced here contrasts with and goes beyond that based on the standard Wick's factorization scheme; it enables determination of both third-order a…
The minimum error of unbiased parameter estimation is quantified by the quantum Fisher information in accordance to the Cramér-Rao bound. We indicate that only superposed NOON states by simultaneous measurements can achieve the maximum quantum Fisher information with form $<\hat{N}^{2}>$ for a given photon number distribution by a POVM in linear two-path interferometer phase measurement. We present a series of specified superposed states with infinite quantum Fisher information but with finite average photon numbers. The advantage of this unbounded quantum Fisher information will be beneficial…
Sensing and measurement tasks in severely adverse conditions such as loss, noise and dephasing can be improved by illumination with quantum states of light. Previous results have shown a modest reduction in the number of measurements necessary to achieve a given precision. Here, we compare three illumination strategies for estimating the relative phase in a noisy, lossy interferometer. When including a common phase fluctuation in the noise processes, we show that using an entangled probe achieves an advantage in parameter estimation precision that scales with the number of entangled modes. Thi…
We analyse the phase space representation of the optimal measurement of a phase shift in an interferometer with equal photon loss in both its arms. In the local phase estimation scenario with a fixed number of photons, we identify features of the spin Wigner function that warrant sub-shot noise precision, and discuss their sensitivity to losses. We derive the asymptotic form of an integral kernel describing the process of photon loss in the phase space in the limit of large photon numbers. The analytic form of this kernel allows one to assess the ultimate precision limit for a lossy interferom…
We present a new operator method in the Heisenberg representation to obtain the signal of parity measurement within a lossless SU(1,1) interferometer. Based on this method, it is convenient to derive the parity signal directly in terms of input states, including general Gaussian or non-Gaussian state. As applications, we revisit the signal of parity measurement within an SU(1,1) interferometer when a coherent or thermal state and a squeezed vacuum state are considered as input states. In addition, we also obtain the parity signal of a Fock state when it passes through an SU(1,1) interferometer…
We solve the general problem of determining, through imaging, the three-dimensional positions of $N$ weak incoherent point-like emitters in an arbitrary spatial configuration. We show that a structured measurement strategy in which a linear interferometer feeds into an array of photo-detectors is always optimal for this estimation problem, in the sense that it saturates the quantum Cramér-Rao bound. We provide a method for the explicit construction of the optimal interferometer. Further explicit results for the quantum Fisher information and the optimal interferometer design that attains it ar…
The problem of estimating a generic phase-shift experienced by a quantum state is addressed for a generally degenerate phase shift operator. The optimal positive operator-valued measure is derived along with the optimal input state. Two relevant examples are analyzed: i) a multi-mode phase shift operator for multipath interferometry; ii) the two mode heterodyne phase detection.
A Mach-Zender interferometer with a gaussian number-difference squeezed input state can exhibit sub-shot-noise phase resolution over a large phase-interval. We obtain the optimal level of squeezing for a given phase-interval $Δθ_0$ and particle number $N$, with the resulting phase-estimation uncertainty smoothly approaching $3.5/N$ as $Δθ_0$ approaches 10/N, achieved with highly squeezed states near the Fock regime. We then analyze an adaptive measurement scheme which allows any phase on $(-π/2,π/2)$ to be measured with a precision of $3.5/N$ requiring only a few measurements, even for very la…
We study the role of quantum entanglement (particle entanglement and mode entanglement) in optical phase estimation by employing the first and second quantization formalisms of quantum mechanics. The quantum Fisher information (QFI) is expressed as a function of the first and second order optical coherence functions. The resulting form of the QFI elucidates the deriving metrological resources for quantum phase estimation: field intensity and photon detection correlations. In addition, our analysis confirms that mode entanglement is not required for quantum-enhanced interferometry, whereas part…
We study a Mach-Zehnder interferometer fed by a coherent state in one input port and vacuum in the other. We explore a Bayesian phase estimation strategy to demonstrate that it is possible to achieve the standard quantum limit independently from the true value of the phase shift and specific assumptions on the noise of the interferometer. We have been able to implement the protocol using parallel operation of two photon-number-resolving detectors and multiphoton coincidence logic electronics at the output ports of a weakly-illuminated Mach-Zehnder interferometer. This protocol is unbiased and …
We show that it is possible to reach the sub shot-noise sensitivity of the phase estimation using two independently prepared Bose-Einstein condensates as an input of an interferometer. In this scenario, the quantum correlations between the particles, which are necessary to beat the shot-noise limit, arise from the indistinguishability of bosons. Allowing for atom number fluctuations independently in each condensate, we calculate the ultimate bound of the sensitivity. Our main conclusion is that even in presence of major atom number fluctuations, an interferometer operating on two independent c…
We derive the asymptotic maximum-likelihood phase estimation uncertainty for any interferometric protocol where the positions of the probe particles are measured to infer the phase, but where correlations between the particles are not accessible. First, we apply our formula to the estimation of the phase acquired in the Mach-Zehnder interferometer and recover the well-know momentum formula for the phase sensitivity. Then, we apply our results to interferometers with two spatially separated modes, which could be implemented with a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a double-well potential. We …
We study in detail a system of two interferometers aimed to the detection of extremely faint phase-fluctuations. This system can represent a breakthrough for detecting a faint correlated signal that would remain otherwise undetectable even using the most sensitive individual interferometric devices, that are limited by the shot noise. If the two interferometers experience identical phase-fluctuations, like the ones introduced by the so called "holographic noise", this signal should emerge if their output signals are correlated, while the fluctuations due to shot noise and other independent con…
National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, School of Physics, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University（南京大学固体微结构物理学院、先进微结构协同创新中心）
We theoretically analyze a Mach-Zehnder interferometer with trapped condensates, and find that it is surprisingly stable against the nonlinearity induced by inter-particle interactions. The phase sensitivity, which we study for number squeezed input states, can overcome the shot noise limit and be increased up to the Heisenberg limit provided that a Bayesian or Maximum-Likelihood phase estimation strategy is used. We finally demonstrate robustness of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer in presence of interactions against condensate oscillations and a realistic atom counting error.
Quantum phase estimation is a paradigmatic problem in quantum sensing andmetrology. Here we show that adaptive methods based on classical machinelearning algorithms can be used to enhance the precision of quantum phase estimation when noisy non-entangled qubits are used as sensors. We employ the Differential Evolution (DE) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithms to this task and we identify the optimal feedback policies which minimize the Holevo variance. We benchmark these schemes with respect to scenarios that include Gaussian and Random Telegraph fluctuations as well as reduced Ram…
We consider the situation when the signal propagating through each arm of an interferometer has a complicated multi-mode structure. We find the relation between the particle-entanglement and the possibility to surpass the shot-noise limit of the phase estimation. Our results are general---they apply to pure and mixed states of identical and distinguishable particles (or combinations of both), for a fixed and fluctuating number of particles. We also show that the method for detecting the entanglement often used in two-mode system can give misleading results when applied to the multi-mode case.
Quantum annealing is explored as a resource for quantum information beyond solution of classical combinatorial problems. Envisaged as a generator of robust interferometric probes, we examine a Hamiltonian of $N>> 1$ uniformly-coupled spins subject to a transverse magnetic field. The discrete many-body problem is mapped onto dynamics of a single one-dimensional particle in a continuous potential. This reveals all the qualitative features of the ground state beyond typical mean-field or large classical spin models. It illustrates explicitly a graceful warping from an entangled unimodal to bi-mod…
