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arXiv:1801.08347 · Physical Review A

Noise-dependent optimal strategies for quantum metrology

Zixin Huang, Chiara Macchiavello, Lorenzo Maccone

Published Mar 22, 2018• 17 citations
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Abstract

For phase estimation using qubits, we show that for some noise channels, the optimal entanglement-assisted strategy depends on the noise level. We note that there is a nontrivial crossover between the parallel-entangled strategy and the ancilla-assisted strategy: in the former the probes are all entangled; in the latter the probes are entangled with a noiseless ancilla but not among themselves. The transition can be explained by the fact that separable states are more robust against noise and therefore are optimal in the high-noise limit, but they are in turn outperformed by ancilla-assisted ones.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.97.032333

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For phase estimation using qubits, we show that for some noise channels, the optimal entanglement-assisted strategy depends on the noise level. We note that there is a nontrivial crossover between the parallel-entangled strategy and the ancilla-assisted strategy: in the former the probes are all entangled; in the latter the probes are entangled with a noiseless ancilla but not among themselves. The transition can be explained by the fact that separable states are more robust against noise and therefore are optimal in the high-noise limit, but they are in turn outperformed by ancilla-assisted ones.
This thesis explores various protocols which can be applied to quantum metrology, such that precision of the measurement can beat the best classical approaches. We first demonstrate that ancilla-assisted schemes can improve phase estimation in the presence of noise, and we propose an experiment to demonstrate these effects. Given that the use of ancillae helps, it is no surprise that there are noisy channels for which the optimal strategy may depend on the noise level. We show that there is a non-trivial crossover between the ancilla-assisted strategy and the parallel-entangled strategy for Pauli noise channels and the amplitude damping channel. We see that under certain circumstances, the environment cannot access the parameter of interest. We then integrated techniques from quantum communication, to derive a general framework that renders quantum metrology protocols into cryptographic ones. Here the protocol is unconditionally secure if the trusted parties wish only to achieve the standard quantum limit. If Heisenberg-limited precision is to be achieved, they sacrifice some security, where adversaries can access information, but only at the risk of getting caught at it (cheat-sensitivity). In many scenarios, the quantum Fisher information is achieved for only one value of the phase. In a particular phase estimation scheme that measures the parity at the output of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer where the input is a two-mode squeezed vacuum, this problem is particularly imminent. We apply an adaptive technique to resolve this issue, showing that one can achieve precisions substantially below the shot noise limit. The key to a quadratically enhanced improvement in quantum metrology is entanglement. Finally, we demonstrate in a photonic system how high-dimensional entanglement can be certified, and provide an alternate interpretation of entanglement from an information-theoretic perspective.
The metrological ability of carefully designed probes can be wrecked by the presence of noise which alters their evolution, reducing the information on the parameter of interest. This spoils the signal-to-noise ratio of any possible measurement. Here we show an experiment in which the introduction of an ancilla improves the estimation of an optical phase with respect to a standard single-qubit strategy. The advantage originates from the coherent coupling of the probe and the ancilla both at the initialization and measurement stages, generating and selecting a subset of overall configurations less affected by the noise.
Quantum metrology overcomes standard precision limits and plays a central role in science and technology. Practically, it is vulnerable to imperfections such as decoherence. Here we demonstrate quantum metrology for noisy channels such that entanglement with ancillary qubits enhances the quantum Fisher information for phase estimation but not otherwise. Our photonic experiment covers a range of noise for various types of channels, including for two randomly alternating channels such that assisted entanglement fails for each noisy channel individually. We simulate noisy channels by implementing space-multiplexed dual interferometers with quantum photonic inputs. We demonstrate the advantage of entanglement-assisted protocols in a phase estimation experiment run with either a single-probe or multiprobe approach. These results establish that entanglement with ancillae is a valuable approach for delivering quantum-enhanced metrology. Our approach to entanglement-assisted quantum metrology via a simple linear-optical interferometric network with easy-to-prepare photonic inputs provides a path towards practical quantum metrology.
Entanglement-assisted quantum communication employs preshared entanglement between sender and receiver as a resource. We apply the same framework to quantum metrology, introducing shared entanglement between the probe and the ancilla in the preparation stage and allowing entangling operations at the measurement stage, i.e., using some entangled ancillary system that does not interact with the system to be sampled. This is known to be useless in the noiseless case, but was recently shown to be useful in the presence of noise [R. Demkowicz-Dobrzanski and L. Maccone, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 250801 (2014); W. D\"ur, M. Skotiniotis, F. Fr\"owis, and B. Kraus, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 080801 (2014); E. M. Kessler, I. Lovchinsky, A. O. Sushkov, and M. D. Lukin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 150802 (2014); R. Demkowicz-Dobrza\ifmmode \acute{n}\else \'{n}\fi{}ski and J. Kolodynski, New J. Phys. 15, 073043 (2013)]. Here we detail how and when it can be of use. For example, surprisingly it is useful when two channels are randomly alternated, for both of which ancillas do not help (depolarizing). We show that it is useful for all levels of noise for many noise models and propose a simple optical experiment to test these results.
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 external 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.
Quantum metrology aims to exploit quantum phenomena to overcome classical limitations in the estimation of relevant parameters. We consider a probe undergoing a phase shift $\ensuremath{\varphi}$ whose generator is randomly sampled according to a distribution with unknown concentration $\ensuremath{\kappa}$, which introduces a physical source of noise. We then investigate strategies for the joint estimation of the two parameters $\ensuremath{\varphi}$ and $\ensuremath{\kappa}$ given a finite number NNN of interactions with the phase imprinting channel. We consider both single qubit and multipartite entangled probes, and identify regions of the parameters where simultaneous estimation is advantageous, resulting in up to a twofold reduction in resources. Quantum enhanced precision is achievable at moderate NNN, while for sufficiently large NNN classical strategies take over and the precision follows the standard quantum limit. We show that full-scale entanglement is not needed to reach such an enhancement, as efficient strategies using significantly fewer qubits in a scheme interpolating between the conventional sequential and parallel metrological schemes yield the same effective performance. These results may have relevant applications in optimization of sensing technologies.