Quantum systems allow one to sense physical parameters beyond the reach of classical statistics---with resolutions greater than $1/N$, where $N$ is the number of constituent particles independently probing a parameter. In the canonical phase sensing scenario the emph{Heisenberg Limit} $1/N^{2}$ may be reached, which requires, as we show, both the relative size of the largest entangled block and the geometric measure of entanglement to be nonvanishing as $Ntoinfty$. Yet, we also demonstrate that in the asymptotic $N$ limit any precision scaling arbitrarily close to the Heisenberg Limit ($1/N^{2-varepsilon}$ with any $varepsilon>0$) may be attained, even though the system gradually becomes noisier and separable, so that both the above entanglement quantifiers asymptotically vanish. Our work shows that sufficiently large quantum systems achieve nearly optimal resolutions despite their relative amount of entanglement being arbitrarily small. In deriving our results, we establish the continuity relation of the quantum Fisher information evaluated for a phaselike parameter, which lets us link it directly to the geometry of quantum states, and hence naturally to the geometric measure of entanglement.
In an idealistic setting, quantum metrology protocols allow to sense physical parameters with mean squared error that scales as $1/N^2$ with the number of particles involved---substantially surpassing the $1/N$-scaling characteristic to classical statistics. A natural question arises, whether such an impressive enhancement persists when one takes into account the decoherence effects that are unavoidable in any real-life implementation. In this thesis, we resolve a major part of this issue by describing general techniques that allow to quantify the attainable precision in metrological schemes in the presence of uncorrelated noise. We show that the abstract geometrical structure of a quantum channel describing the noisy evolution of a single particle dictates then critical bounds on the ultimate quantum enhancement. Our results prove that an infinitesimal amount of noise is enough to restrict the precision to scale classically in the asymptotic $N$ limit, and thus constrain the maximal improvement to a constant factor. Although for low numbers of particles the decoherence may be ignored, for large $N$ the presence of noise heavily alters the form of both optimal states and measurements attaining the ultimate resolution. However, the established bounds are then typically achievable with use of techniques natural to current experiments. In this work, we thoroughly introduce the necessary concepts and mathematical tools lying behind metrological tasks, including both frequentist and Bayesian estimation theory frameworks. We provide examples of applications of the methods presented to typical qubit noise models, yet we also discuss in detail the phase estimation tasks in Mach-Zehnder interferometry both in the classical and quantum setting---with particular emphasis given to photonic losses while analysing the impact of decoherence.
Quantum metrology offers an enhanced performance in experiments such as gravitational wave-detection, magnetometry or atomic clocks frequency calibration. The enhancement, however, requires a delicate tuning of relevant quantum features such as entanglement or squeezing. For any practical application the inevitable impact of decoherence needs to be taken into account in order to correctly quantify the ultimate attainable gain in precision. We compare the applicability and the effectiveness of various methods of calculating the ultimate precision bounds resulting from the presence of decoherence. This allows us to put a number of seemingly unrelated concepts into a common framework and arrive at an explicit hierarchy of quantum metrological methods in terms of the tightness of the bounds they provide. In particular, we show a way to extend the techniques originally proposed in Demkowicz-Dobrzanski et al 2012 Nat. Commun. 3 1063, so that they can be efficiently applied not only in the asymptotic but also in the finite-number of particles regime. As a result, we obtain a simple and direct method, yielding bounds that interpolate between the quantum enhanced scaling characteristic for small number of particles and the asymptotic regime, where quantum enhancement amounts to a constant factor improvement. Methods are applied to numerous models including noisy phase and frequency estimation, as well as the estimation of the decoherence strength itself.
A theoretical model describing the Raman scattering process in atomic vapors is constructed. The treatment investigates the low-excitation regime suitable for modern experimental applications. Despite the incorporated decoherence effects (possibly mode dependent) it allows for a direct separation of the time evolution from the spatial degrees of freedom. The impact of noise on the temporal properties of the process is examined. The model is applied in two experimentally relevant situations of ultra-cold and room-temperature atoms. The spatial eigenmodes of the Stokes photons and their coupling to atomic excitations are computed. Similarly, dynamics and the waveform of the collective atomic state are derived for quantum memory implementations.
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.
We find the optimal scheme for quantum phase estimation in the presence of loss when no a priori knowledge on the estimated phase is available. We prove analytically an explicit lower bound on estimation uncertainty, which shows that, as a function of number of probes, quantum precision enhancement amounts at most to a constant factor improvement over classical strategies
