We propose a quantum fitting scheme to estimate the magnetic field gradient with $N$-atom spins preparing in W state, which attains the Heisenberg-scaling accuracy. Our scheme combines the quantum multi-parameter estimation and the least square linear fitting method to achieve the quantum Cram{e}r-Rao bound (QCRB). We show that the estimated quantity achieves the Heisenberg-scaling accuracy. In single parameter estimation with assumption that the magnetic field is strictly linear, two optimal measurements can achieve the identical Heisenberg-scaling accuracy. Proper interpretation of the super-Heisenberg-scaling accuracy is presented. The scheme of quantum metrology combined with data fitting provides a new method in fast high precision measurements.
We propose a quantum method to judge whether two spatially separated clocks have been synchronized within a specific accuracy $sigma$. If the measurement result of the experiment is obviously a nonzero value, the time difference between two clocks is smaller than $sigma$; otherwise the difference is beyond $sigma$. On sharing the 2$N$-qubit bipartite maximally entangled state in this scheme, the accuracy of judgement can be enhanced to $sigmasim{pi}/{(omega(N+1))}$. This criterion is consistent with Heisenberg scaling that can be considered as beating standard quantum limit, moreover, the unbiased estimation condition is not necessary.
The critical quantum metrology, which exploits the quantum phase transition for high precision measurement, has gained increasing attention recently. The critical quantum metrology with the continuous quantum phase transition, however, is experimentally very challenging since the continuous quantum phase transition only exists at the thermal dynamical limit. Here, we propose an adiabatic scheme on a perturbed Ising spin model with the first order quantum phase transition. By employing the Landau-Zener anticrossing, we can not only encode the unknown parameter in the ground state but also tune the energy gap to control the evolution time of the adiabatic passage. We experimentally implement the adiabatic scheme on the nuclear magnetic resonance and show that the achieved precision attains the Heisenberg scaling. The advantages of the scheme-easy implementation, robust against the decay, tunable energy gap-are critical for practical applications of quantum metrology.
The thermal entanglement of a two-qubit anisotropic Heisenberg $XYZ$ chain under an inhomogeneous magnetic field b is studied. It is shown that when inhomogeneity is increased to certain value, the entanglement can exhibit a larger revival than that of less values of b. The property is both true for zero temperature and a finite temperature. The results also show that the entanglement and critical temperature can be increased by increasing inhomogeneous exteral magnetic field.
It has been suggested that both quantum superpositions and nonlinear interactions are important resources for quantum metrology. However, to date the different roles that these two resources play in the precision enhancement are not well understood. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a Heisenberg-scaling metrology to measure the parameter governing the nonlinear coupling between two different optical modes. The intense mode with n (more than 10^6 in our work) photons manifests its effect through the nonlinear interaction strength which is proportional to its average photon-number. The superposition state of the weak mode, which contains only a single photon, is responsible for both the linear Hamiltonian and the scaling of the measurement precision. By properly preparing the initial state of single photon and making projective photon-counting measurement, the extracted classical Fisher information (FI) can saturate the quantum FI embedded in the combined state after coupling, which is ~ n^2 and leads to a practical precision ~ 1.2/n. Free from the utilization of entanglement, our work paves a way to realize Heisenberg-scaling precision when only a linear Hamiltonian is involved.
We generalize past work on quantum sensor networks to show that, for $d$ input parameters, entanglement can yield a factor $mathcal O(d)$ improvement in mean squared error when estimating an analytic function of these parameters. We show that the protocol is optimal for qubit sensors, and conjecture an optimal protocol for photons passing through interferometers. Our protocol is also applicable to continuous variable measurements, such as one quadrature of a field operator. We outline a few potential applications, including calibration of laser operations in trapped ion quantum computing.