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arXiv:1901.10445 · Physical Review Letters

Quantum Spectrometry for Arbitrary Noise

Daniel Goldwater, P. F. Barker, Angelo Bassi, Sandro Donadi

Published Dec 2, 2019• 8 citations
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Abstract

We present a technique for recovering the spectrum of a non-Markovian bosonic bath and/or non-Markovian noises coupled to a harmonic oscillator. The treatment is valid under the conditions that the environment is large and hot compared to the oscillator, and that its temporal autocorrelation functions are symmetric with respect to time translation and reflection-criteria which we consider fairly minimal. We model a demonstration of the technique as deployed in the experimental scenario of a nanosphere levitated in a Paul trap, and show that it would effectively probe the spectrum of an electric field noise source from 10^{2} to 10^{6} Hz with a resolution inversely proportional to the measurement time. This technique may be deployed in quantum sensing, metrology, computing, and in experimental probes of foundational questions.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.123.230801

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We present a technique for recovering the spectrum of a non-Markovian bosonic bath and/or non-Markovian noises coupled to a harmonic oscillator. The treatment is valid under the conditions that the environment is large and hot compared to the oscillator, and that its temporal autocorrelation functions are symmetric with respect to time translation and reflection-criteria which we consider fairly minimal. We model a demonstration of the technique as deployed in the experimental scenario of a nanosphere levitated in a Paul trap, and show that it would effectively probe the spectrum of an electric field noise source from 10^{2} to 10^{6} Hz with a resolution inversely proportional to the measurement time. This technique may be deployed in quantum sensing, metrology, computing, and in experimental probes of foundational questions.
Characterization and suppression of noise are essential for the control of harmonic oscillators in the quantum regime. We measure the noise spectrum of a quantum harmonic oscillator from low frequency to near the oscillator resonance by sensing its response to amplitude modulated periodic drives with a qubit. Using the motion of a trapped ion, we experimentally demonstrate two different implementations with combined sensitivity to noise from 500 Hz to 600 kHz. We apply our method to measure the intrinsic noise spectrum of an ion trap potential in a previously unaccessed frequency range.
The force estimation problem in Quantum Metrology with an arbitrary non-Markovian bath is considered. No assumptions are made on the bath spectrum and coupling strength with the probe. Considering the natural global unitary evolution of both bath and probe and assuming initial global Gaussian states we are able to solve the main issues of any quantum metrological problem: the best achievable precision determined by the quantum Fisher information, the best initial state and the best measurement. We emphasis the effects of the non-Markovian bath by studying the short time behavior and find out the essence of non-Markovian effects such as increase in quantum Fisher information. We show that at this time scale the non-Markovian dynamics is much closer to the free dynamics than the Markovian equivalent. This brings huge consequences for the sequential measurement as the quantum Fisher information becomes unbounded when the initial probe mean energy goes to infinity, whereas its Markovian counterpart remains bounded by a constant. The long time behavior shows the complexity and potential variety of non-Markovian effects, somewhere between the exponential decay characteristic of Markovian dynamics and the sinusoidal oscillations characteristic of resonant narrow band.
Quantum sensors offer exceptional sensitivity to nanoscale magnetic fluctuations, where non-stationary effects -- such as spin diffusion -- and non-Markovian dynamics arising from coupling to few environmental degrees of freedom play critical roles. Because fully reconstructing the microscopic structure of realistic spin baths is often infeasible, a practical challenge is to identify the dynamical features that are actually encoded in the sensor's decoherence signal. Here, we demonstrate how quantum sensors can operationally characterize the statistical nature of environmental noise, distinguishing between stationary and non-stationary behaviors, as well as Markovian and non-Markovian dynamics. Using nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond as a platform, we develop a physical noise model that captures the essential dynamical features of realistic environments relevant to sensor observables -- independently of the microscopic bath details -- and provides analytical predictions for Ramsey decay across different regimes. These predictions are experimentally validated through controlled noise injection with tunable correlation properties. Our results showcase the capability of quantum sensors to isolate and identify key dynamical properties of complex environments, without requiring full microscopic bath reconstruction. This work clarifies the operational signatures of non-stationarity and non-Markovian behavior at the nanoscale and lays the foundation for strategies that mitigates decoherence while exploiting environmental dynamics for enhanced quantum sensing.
The unavoidable interaction of a quantum system with its environment usually degrades its coherence and quantumness. The environment and the decoherence process may be described as the interaction with a classical or quantized bath. As a matter of fact, the classical description becomes progressively more reliable as far as the environment has many degrees of freedom, i.e. it becomes complex, or when the interaction between a quantum system and a classical fluctuating field is taken into account. In this thesis, I consider a qubit system coupled to a stochastic classical field and address�the decoherence and non-Markovianity induced by the external noise as well as the spectral characterization of the classical field by quantum-limited measurement on the qubit. I thus analyze the dynamics of quantum correlations between two non-interacting, initially entangled qubits subject to a classical noise generated by a stochastic process. Two relevant classes of noise are taken into account: Gaussian noise, such as the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process, and non-Gaussian noise, such as the random telgraph noise and the colored noise with 1/f spectrum. I also discuss the evaluation of non-Markovianity of the induced dynamical map and link the presence of revivals of quantum correlations with the information backflow to the system. The precise characterization of the stochastic process generating the classical noise, possibly using minimal resources, is a crucial ingredient for the design of high-precision measurements and reliable communication protocols. To this purpose, I also address the characterization of the spectral parameters of classical noise by quantum probes, e.g. a qubit coupled to the stochastic process generating the noise. By using the tools of quantum estimation theory, I explore the performances of quantum measurements on the qubit and show that it is possible to effectively extract information about the noise.
Quantum noise is a fundamental limitation for quantum sensors and results in the so-called shot-noise limit. Nowadays, several systems such as optical clocks or gravitational wave detectors approach measurement sensitivities where this limitation poses a major contribution to the total statistical uncertainty. It is known that this limit can be overcome by preparing the probe in a non-classical state. We will give an overview over the different non-classical states that have been implemented in the motion of single trapped ions and discuss their individual advantages and limitations in metrology. Possible applications for the presented experiments are the measurement of small oscillating electric fields and trapping frequencies. The Focus will be on our experimental work on Fock states, where quantum-enhanced sensing in both scenarios is possible with the same quantum state.
Every quantum system is coupled to an environment. Such system-environment interaction leads to temporal correlation between quantum operations at different times, resulting in non-Markovian noise. In principle, a full characterisation of non-Markovian noise requires tomography of a multi-time processes matrix, which is both computationally and experimentally demanding. In this paper, we propose a more efficient solution. We employ machine learning models to estimate the amount of non-Markovianity, as quantified by an information-theoretic measure, with tomographically incomplete measurement. We test our model on a quantum optical experiment, and we are able to predict the non-Markovianity measure with 90%90\%90% accuracy. Our experiment paves the way for efficient detection of non-Markovian noise appearing in large scale quantum computers.