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.
We analyze the role of entanglement among probes and with external ancillas in quantum metrology. In the absence of noise, it is known that unentangled sequential strategies can achieve the same Heisenberg scaling of entangled strategies and that ext
ernal ancillas are useless. This changes in the presence of noise: here we prove that entangled strategies can have higher precision than unentangled ones and that the addition of passive external ancillas can also increase the precision. We analyze some specific noise models and use the results to conjecture a general hierarchy for quantum metrology strategies in the presence of noise.
The fundamental quantum interferometry bound limits the sensitivity of an interferometer for a given total rate of photons and for a given decoherence rate inside the measurement device.We theoretically show that the recently reported quantum-noise l
imited sensitivity of the squeezed-light-enhanced gravitational-wave detector GEO600 is exceedingly close to this bound, given the present amount of optical loss. Furthermore, our result proves that the employed combination of a bright coherent state and a squeezed vacuum state is generally the optimum practical approach for phase estimation with high precision on absolute scales. Based on our analysis we conclude that neither the application of Fock states nor N00N states or any other sophisticated nonclassical quantum states would have yielded an appreciably higher quantum-noise limited sensitivity.
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 entan
glement 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.
We demonstrate that the optimal states in lossy quantum interferometry may be efficiently simulated using low rank matrix product states. We argue that this should be expected in all realistic quantum metrological protocols with uncorrelated noise an
d is related to the elusive nature of the Heisenberg precision scaling in presence of decoherence.
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 maxim
al 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 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 in
terferometric schemes with and without an external phase reference and show a proper way to use QFI in both situations.
We report experimental generation of a noisy entangled four-photon state that exhibits a separation between the secure key contents and distillable entanglement, a hallmark feature of the recently established quantum theory of private states. The pri
vacy analysis, based on the full tomographic reconstruction of the prepared state, is utilized in a proof-of-principle key generation. The inferiority of distillation-based strategies to extract the key is exposed by an implementation of an entanglement distillation protocol for the produced state.
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 o
f number of probes, quantum precision enhancement amounts at most to a constant factor improvement over classical strategies
