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arXiv:1403.4080

Multiparameter Heisenberg limit

Mankei Tsang

Published Mar 17, 2014• 2 citations
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Abstract

Using a quantum version of the Bell-Ziv-Zakai bound, I derive a Heisenberg limit to multiparameter estimation for any Gaussian prior probability density. The mean-square error lower bound is shown to have a universal quadratic scaling with respect to a quantum resource, such as the average photon number in the case of optical phase estimation, suitably weighted by the prior covariance matrix.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1403.4080

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Using a quantum version of the Bell-Ziv-Zakai bound, I derive a Heisenberg limit to multiparameter estimation for any Gaussian prior probability density. The mean-square error lower bound is shown to have a universal quadratic scaling with respect to a quantum resource, such as the average photon number in the case of optical phase estimation, suitably weighted by the prior covariance matrix.
We propose quantum versions of the Bell-Ziv-Zakai lower bounds for the error in multiparameter estimation.As an application, we consider measurement of a time-varying optical phase signal with stationary Gaussian prior statistics and a power-law spectrum ∼1=jωj p , with p > 1.With no other assumptions, we show that the mean-square error has a lower bound scaling as 1=N 2ðp-1Þ=ðpþ1Þ , where N is the time-averaged mean photon flux.Moreover, we show that this scaling is achievable by sampling and interpolation, for any p > 1.This bound is thus a rigorous generalization of the Heisenberg limit, for measurement of a single unknown optical phase, to a stochastically varying optical phase.
I propose quantum versions of the Ziv-Zakai bounds as alternatives to the widely used quantum Cramér-Rao bounds for quantum parameter estimation. From a simple form of the proposed bounds, I derive both a Heisenberg error limit that scales with the average energy and a limit similar to the quantum Cramér-Rao bound that scales with the energy variance. These results are further illustrated by applying the bound to a few examples of optical phase estimation, which show that a quantum Ziv-Zakai bound can be much higher and thus tighter than a quantum Cramér-Rao bound for states with highly non-gaussian photon-number statistics in certain regimes and also stay close to the latter where the latter is expected to be tight.
The Heisenberg limit traditionally provides a lower bound on the phase uncertainty scaling as $1/\ensuremath{\langle}N\ensuremath{\rangle}$, where $\ensuremath{\langle}N\ensuremath{\rangle}$ is the mean number of photons in the probe. However, this limit has a number of loopholes which potentially might be exploited to achieve measurements with even greater accuracy. Here we close these loopholes by proving a completely rigorous form of the Heisenberg limit for the average error over all phase shifts, applicable to any estimate of a completely unknown phase shift. Our result gives a completely general, constraint-free, and nonasymptotic statement of the Heisenberg limit. It holds for all phase estimation schemes, including multiple passes, nonlinear phase shifts, multimode probes, and arbitrary measurements.
The ultimate limits to estimating a fluctuating phase imposed on an optical beam can be found using the recently derived continuous quantum Cram\'er-Rao bound. For Gaussian stationary statistics, and a phase spectrum scaling asymptotically as ${\ensuremath{\omega}}^{\ensuremath{-}p}$ with p>1p>1p>1, the minimum mean-square error in any (single-time) phase estimate scales as ${\mathcal{N}}^{\ensuremath{-}2(p\ensuremath{-}1)/(p+1)}$, where N\mathcal{N}N is the photon flux. This gives the usual Heisenberg limit for a constant phase (as the limit $p\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$) and provides a stochastic Heisenberg limit for fluctuating phases. For p=2p=2p=2 (Brownian motion), this limit can be attained by phase tracking.
The simultaneous estimation of multiple parameters is a central task in quantum metrology, distributed sensing, and the calibration of large photonic interferometers. A fundamental question is how many independent parameter combinations can inherit Heisenberg scaling from a given number of squeezed probes in a multimode Gaussian network. Here, we answer this question for arbitrary passive linear optical networks. For a ppp-parameter, MMM-channel interferometer probed by kkk single-mode squeezed states and at least one coherent state in the remaining channels, we show that the rank of the Heisenberg-scaling coefficient of the quantum Fisher information matrix is bounded by nHS≤min⁡{p,k(k+3)/2}n_{\rm HS}\le \min\{p,k(k+3)/2\}nHS​≤min{p,k(k+3)/2}, which corresponds to the maximum number of independent combinations of parameters that can be estimated with Heisenberg-scaling sensitivity. The bound separates into two geometrically distinct contributions. The covariance contribution of the quantum Fisher information, which describes squeezing-enhanced fluctuations, provides at most k(k+1)/2k(k+1)/2k(k+1)/2 parameter combinations estimable at Heisenberg-scaling sensitivity, while the first-moment contribution provides at most kkk additional independent parameter combinations with Heisenberg-scaling sensitivity. We identify the conditions for saturating these bounds and construct a passive family of interferometers that saturates these bounds.
Abstract Quantum multiparameter estimation involves estimating multiple parameters simultaneously and can be more precise than estimating them individually. Our interest here is to determine fundamental quantum limits to the achievable multiparameter estimation precision in the presence of noise. We first present a lower bound to the estimation error covariance for a noisy initial probe state evolving through a noiseless quantum channel. We then present a lower bound to the estimation error covariance in the most general form for a noisy initial probe state evolving through a noisy quantum channel. We show conditions and accordingly measurements to attain these estimation precision limits for noisy systems. We see that the Heisenberg precision scaling of 1/N can be achieved with a probe comprising N particles even in the presence of noise. In fact, some noise in the initial probe state or the quantum channel can serve as a feature rather than a bug, since the estimation precision scaling achievable in the presence of noise in the initial state or the channel in some situations is impossible in the absence of noise in the initial state or the channel. However, a lot of noise harms the quantum advantage achievable with N parallel resources, and allows for a best precision scaling of 1/N{\bf{1}}/\sqrt{{\boldsymbol{N}}}1/N​ 1 / N . Moreover, the Heisenberg precision limit can be beaten with noise in the channel, and we present a super-Heisenberg precision limit with scaling of 1/N2 for optimal amount of noise in the channel, characterized by one-particle evolution operators. Furthermore, using γ-particle evolution operators for the noisy channel, where γ > 1, the best precision scaling attainable is 1/N2γ, which is otherwise known to be only possible using 2γ-particle evolution operators for a noiseless channel.