The ultimate precision in any measurement is dictated by the physical process implementing the observation. The methods of quantum metrology have now succeeded in establishing bounds on the achievable precision for phase measurements over noisy channels. In particular, they demonstrate how the Heisenberg scaling of the precision can not be attained in these conditions. Here we discuss how the ultimate bound in presence of loss has a physical motivation in the Kramers-Kronig relations and we show how they link the precision on the phase estimation to that on the loss parameter.
The macroscopic electric permittivity of a given medium may depend on frequency, but this frequency dependence cannot be arbitrary, its real and imaginary parts are related by the well-known Kramers-Kronig relations. Here, we show that an analogous paradigm applies to the macroscopic electric conductivity. If the causality principle is taken into account, there exists Kramers-Kronig relations for conductivity, which are mathematically equivalent to the Hilbert transform. These relations impose strong constraints that models of heterogeneous media should satisfy to have a physically plausible frequency dependence of the conductivity and permittivity. We illustrate these relations and constraints by a few examples of known physical media. These extended relations constitute important constraints to test the consistency of past and future experimental measurements of the electric properties of heterogeneous media.
We show that quantification of the performance of quantum-enhanced measurement schemes based on the concept of quantum Fisher information yields asymptotically equivalent results as the rigorous Bayesian approach, provided generic uncorrelated noise is present in the setup. At the same time, we show that for the problem of decoherence-free phase estimation this equivalence breaks down and the achievable estimation uncertainty calculated within the Bayesian approach is by a $pi$ factor larger than that predicted by the QFI even in the large prior knowledge (small parameter fluctuation) regime, where QFI is conventionally regarded as a reliable figure of merit. We conjecture that the analogous discrepancy is present in arbitrary decoherence-free unitary parameter estimation scheme and propose a general formula for the asymptotically achievable precision limit. We also discuss protocols utilizing states with indefinite number of particles and show that within the Bayesian approach it is legitimate to replace the number of particles with the mean number of particles in the formulas for the asymptotic precision, which as a consequence provides another argument that proposals based on the properties of the QFI of indefinite particle number states leading to sub-Heisenberg precisions are not practically feasible.
Quantum metrology protocols allow to surpass precision limits typical to classical statistics. However, in recent years, no-go theorems have been formulated, which state that typical forms of uncorrelated noise can constrain the quantum enhancement to a constant factor, and thus bound the error to the standard asymptotic scaling. In particular, that is the case of time-homogeneous (Lindbladian) dephasing and, more generally, all semigroup dynamics that include phase covariant terms, which commute with the system Hamiltonian. We show that the standard scaling can be surpassed when the dynamics is no longer ruled by a semigroup and becomes time-inhomogeneous. In this case, the ultimate precision is determined by the system short-time behaviour, which when exhibiting the natural Zeno regime leads to a non-standard asymptotic resolution. In particular, we demonstrate that the relevant noise feature dictating the precision is the violation of the semigroup property at short timescales, while non-Markovianity does not play any specific role.
A Kramers-Kronig receiver with a continuous wave tone added digitally at the transmitter is combined with a digital resolution enhancer to limit the increase in transmitter quantization noise. Performance increase is demonstrated, as well as the ability to reduce the number of bits in the digital-to-analog converter.
Low-loss electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) in the scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) probes the valence electron density and relevant optoelectronic properties such as band gap energies and other band structure transitions. The measured spectra can be formulated in a dielectric theory framework, comparable to optical spectroscopies and ab-initio simulations. Moreover, Kramers-Kronig analysis (KKA), an inverse algorithm based on the homonym relations, can be employed for the retrieval of the complex dielectric function (CDF). However, spurious contributions traditionally not considered in this framework typically impact low-loss EELS modifying the spectral shapes and precluding the correct measurement and retrieval of the dielectric information. A relativistic KKA algorithm is able to account for the bulk and surface radiative-loss contributions to low-loss EELS, revealing the correct dielectric properties. Using a synthetic low-loss EELS model, we propose some modifications on the naive implementation of this algorithm that broadens its range of application. The robustness of the algorithm is improved by regularization, appliying previous knowledge about the shape and smoothness of the correction term. Additionally, our efficient numerical integration methodology allows processing hyperspectral datasets in a reasonable amount of time. Harnessing these abilities, we show how simultaneous relativistic KKA processing of several spectra can share information to produce an improved result.