We address the non-Gaussianity (nG) of states obtained by weakly perturbing a Gaussian state and investigate the relationships with quantum estimation. For classical perturbations, i.e. perturbations to eigenvalues, we found that the nG of the perturbed state may be written as the quantum Fisher information (QFI) distance minus a term depending on the infinitesimal energy change, i.e. it provides a lower bound to statistical distinguishability. Upon moving on isoenergetic surfaces in a neighbourhood of a Gaussian state, nG thus coincides with a proper distance in the Hilbert space and exactly quantifies the statistical distinguishability of the perturbations. On the other hand, for perturbations leaving the covariance matrix unperturbed, we show that nG provides an upper bound to the QFI. Our results show that the geometry of non-Gaussian states in the neighbourhood of a Gaussian state is definitely not trivial and cannot be subsumed by a differential structure. Nevertheless, the analysis of perturbations to a Gaussian state reveals that nG may be a resource for quantum estimation. The nG of specific families of perturbed Gaussian states is analysed in some detail with the aim of finding the maximally non-Gaussian state obtainable from a given Gaussian one.
We address the non-Gaussianity (nG) of states obtained by weakly perturbing a Gaussian state and investigate the relationships with quantum estimation. For classical perturbations, i.e. perturbations to eigenvalues, we found that the nG of the perturbed state may be written as the quantum Fisher information (QFI) distance minus a term depending on the infinitesimal energy change, i.e. it provides a lower bound to statistical distinguishability. Upon moving on isoenergetic surfaces in a neighbourhood of a Gaussian state, nG thus coincides with a proper distance in the Hilbert space and exactly quantifies the statistical distinguishability of the perturbations. On the other hand, for perturbations leaving the covariance matrix unperturbed, we show that nG provides an upper bound to the QFI. Our results show that the geometry of non-Gaussian states in the neighbourhood of a Gaussian state is definitely not trivial and cannot be subsumed by a differential structure. Nevertheless, the analysis of perturbations to a Gaussian state reveals that nG may be a resource for quantum estimation. The nG of specific families of perturbed Gaussian states is analysed in some detail with the aim of finding the maximally non-Gaussian state obtainable from a given Gaussian one.
We address the quantification of non-Gaussianity (nG) of states and operations in continuous-variable systems and its use in quantum information. We start by illustrating in detail the properties and the relationships of two recently proposed measures of nG based on the Hilbert-Schmidt distance and the quantum relative entropy (QRE) between the state under examination and a reference Gaussian state. We then evaluate the non-Gaussianities of several families of non-Gaussian quantum states and show that the two measures have the same basic properties and also share the same qualitative behavior in most of the examples taken into account. However, we also show that they introduce a different relation of order; that is, they are not strictly monotone to each other. We exploit the nG measures for states in order to introduce a measure of nG for quantum operations, to assess Gaussification and de-Gaussification protocols, and to investigate in detail the role played by nG in entanglement-distillation protocols. Besides, we exploit the QRE-based nG measure to provide different insight on the extremality of Gaussian states for some entropic quantities such as conditional entropy, mutual information, and the Holevo bound. We also deal with parameter estimation and present a theorem connecting the QRE nG to the quantum Fisher information. Finally, since evaluation of the QRE nG measure requires the knowledge of the full density matrix, we derive some experimentally friendly lower bounds to nG for some classes of states and by considering the possibility of performing on the states only certain efficient or inefficient measurements.
The fundamental metrological limits of temperature sensing in open quantum systems remain largely unresolved, particularly regarding the role of non-Gaussian quantum resources. In this letter, we establish analytic bounds on the quantum Fisher information (QFI) for temperature estimation using non-Gaussian states undergoing dissipative bosonic evolution. By focusing on the short-time regime governed by a time-local master equation, we derive precise scaling laws that elucidate when and how non-Gaussian probes decisively outperform Gaussian states under identical energy constraints. Our analysis uncovers a distinct linear-in-time QFI enhancement unique to Fock states, in contrast to the inherently weaker, quadratic scaling of Gaussian probes. These theoretical insights are substantiated through exact numerical simulations and mapped onto experimentally accessible platforms such as circuit QED. Our results not only clarify the quantum thermometric advantage of non-Gaussianity but also chart a realistic pathway toward harnessing it in noisy quantum technologies.
We define a local Riemannian metric tensor in the manifold of Gaussian channels and the distance that it induces. We adopt an information-geometric approach and define a metric derived from the Bures-Fisher metric for quantum states. The resulting metric inherits several desirable properties from the Bures-Fisher metric and is operationally motivated by distinguishability considerations: It serves as an upper bound to the attainable quantum Fisher information for the channel parameters using Gaussian states, under generic constraints on the physically available resources. Our approach naturally includes the use of entangled Gaussian probe states. We prove that the metric enjoys some desirable properties like stability and covariance. As a by-product, we also obtain some general results in Gaussian channel estimation that are the continuous-variable analogs of previously known results in finite dimensions. We prove that optimal probe states are always pure and bounded in the number of ancillary modes, even in the presence of constraints on the reduced state input in the channel. This has experimental and computational implications. It limits the complexity of optimal experimental setups for channel estimation and reduces the computational requirements for the evaluation of the metric: Indeed, we construct a converging algorithm for its computation. We provide explicit formulas for computing the multiparametric quantum Fisher information for dissipative channels probed with arbitrary Gaussian states and provide the optimal observables for the estimation of the channel parameters (e.g., bath couplings, squeezing, and temperature).
Understanding how thermal fluctuations modify or suppress quantum-enhanced sensing is a central problem in quantum metrology. Closely related questions arise in quantum thermodynamics, particularly regarding the relation between the work induced by a signal and the information acquired by a sensor. Here, we establish general relations among the sensitivity of thermal quantum states, as quantified by different quantum Fisher information metrics, their temperature dependence, and the work induced by a unitary signal. We further show that, at high temperature, all monotone QFI metrics coincide to leading order with a universal quantity that can be expressed as the variance of a simple observable and itself defines a lesser-known QFI metric. This emergent uniqueness is reminiscent of the uniqueness of classical Fisher information in information geometry. In continuous-variable systems, the infinite-temperature limit is finite and generically non-zero for quadratic Gaussian signals, while it diverges for higher-degree signals. Remarkably, for any purely quadratic signal generator, the infinite-temperature QFI is at least twice the zero-temperature SLD QFI or, equivalently, at least eight times the ground-state variance of the generator. Consequently, the Cramér--Rao lower bound on the estimator variance is reduced by at least a factor of two. We illustrate these results using harmonic chains of bosonic modes relevant to trapped-ion platforms and quantum field-theoretic models.
Abstract Our purpose here is to draw attention to an interesting relationship that can be shown to hold between (a) information geometry, and (b) quantum geometry. By ‘information geometry’, we mean the natural geometry associated with families of probability distributions. This is a subject that goes back more than half a century to the pioneering work of Rao (1945), who showed that the Fisher information matrix associated with a parametrised family of probability dis tributions gives rise to a natural Riemannian metric on the parameter space. This then allows one to speak in a precise way of the ‘distance’ between two probability distributions, an idea that turns out to be useful in problems of statistical inference. An extensive literature has thus developed, following this line of enquiry, on applications of differential geometry to statistics (see, e.g., Amari (1985), Barndorff-Nielsen et al. (1986), Murray and Rice (1993)). By ‘quantum geometry’, on the other hand, we mean the geometry of the manifold of states associated with a given quantum mechanical system. In particular, we consider the manifold of ‘pure’ states associated with a given complex Hilbert space. This is the space of ‘rays’ through the origin in the Hilbert space, which has the structure of a complex projective space. It is known that the usual rules of quantum mechanics allow one to construct a natural metric on this space, namely the Fubini-Study metric, the specification of which is equivalent to all the familiar structure associated with ordinary quantum mechanics.
We investigate a measure of distinguishability defined by the quantum Chernoff bound, which naturally induces the quantum Chernoff metric over a manifold of quantum states. Based on a quantum statistical model, we alternatively derive this metric by means of perturbation expansion. Moreover, we show that the quantum Chernoff metric coincides with the infinitesimal form of the quantum Hellinger distance, and reduces to the variant version of the quantum Fisher information for the single-parameter case. We also give the exact form of the quantum Chernoff metric for a qubit system containing a single parameter.