No Arabic abstract
Quantum metrology holds the promise of an early practical application of quantum technologies, in which measurements of physical quantities can be made with much greater precision than what is achievable with classical technologies. In this review, we collect some of the key theoretical results in quantum parameter estimation by presenting the theory for the quantum estimation of a single parameter, multiple parameters, and optical estimation using Gaussian states. We give an overview of results in areas of current research interest, such as Bayesian quantum estimation, noisy quantum metrology, and distributed quantum sensing. We address the question how minimum measurement errors can be achieved using entanglement as well as more general quantum states. This review is presented from a geometric perspective. This has the advantage that it unifies a wide variety of estimation procedures and strategies, thus providing a more intuitive big picture of quantum parameter estimation.
In this article we derive a measure of quantumness in quantum multi-parameter estimation problems. We can show that the ratio between the mean Uhlmann Curvature and the Fisher Information provides a figure of merit which estimates the amount of incompatibility arising from the quantum nature of the underlying physical system. This ratio accounts for the discrepancy between the attainable precision in the simultaneous estimation of multiple parameters and the precision predicted by the Cramer-Rao bound. As a testbed for this concept, we consider a quantum many-body system in thermal equilibrium, and explore the quantum compatibility of the model across its phase diagram.
We study the geometric measure of quantum coherence recently proposed in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 020403 (2015)]. Both lower and upper bounds of this measure are provided. These bounds are shown to be tight for a class of important coherent states -- maximally coherent mixed states. The trade-off relation between quantum coherence and mixedness for this measure is also discussed.
We propose to use neural networks to estimate the rates of coherent and incoherent processes in quantum systems from continuous measurement records. In particular, we adapt an image recognition algorithm to recognize the patterns in experimental signals and link them to physical quantities. We demonstrate that the parameter estimation works unabatedly in the presence of detector imperfections which complicate or rule out Bayesian filter analyses.
We develop generalized bounds for quantum single-parameter estimation problems for which the coupling to the parameter is described by intrinsic multi-system interactions. For a Hamiltonian with $k$-system parameter-sensitive terms, the quantum limit scales as $1/N^k$ where $N$ is the number of systems. These quantum limits remain valid when the Hamiltonian is augmented by any parameter independent interaction among the systems and when adaptive measurements via parameter-independent coupling to ancillas are allowed.
We investigate the quantum Cramer-Rao bounds on the joint multiple-parameter estimation with the Gaussian state as a probe. We derive the explicit right logarithmic derivative and symmetric logarithmic derivative operators in such a situation. We compute the corresponding quantum Fisher information matrices, and find that they can be fully expressed in terms of the mean displacement and covariance matrix of the Gaussian state. Finally, we give some examples to show the utility of our analytical results.