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arXiv:2104.06284 · Physical Review A

Noisy quantum metrology with the assistance of indefinite causal order

François Chapeau‐Blondeau

Published Mar 29, 2021• 52 citations
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Abstract

A generic qubit unitary operator affected by depolarizing noise is duplicated and inserted in a quantum switch process, realizing a superposition of causal orders. The characterization of the resulting switched quantum channel is worked out for its action on the joint state of the probe-control qubit pair. The switched channel is then specifically investigated for the important metrological task of phase estimation on the noisy unitary operator, with the performance assessed by the Fisher information, classical or quantum. A comparison is made with conventional techniques of estimation where the noisy unitary is directly probed in a one-stage or two-stage cascade with definite order or several uses of them with two or more qubits. In the switched channel with indefinite order, specific properties are reported, meaningful for estimation and not present with conventional techniques. It is shown that the control qubit, although it never directly interacts with the unitary, can nevertheless be measured alone for effective estimation, while discarding the probe qubit that interacts with the unitary. Also, measurement of the control qubit maintains the possibility of efficient estimation in difficult conditions where conventional estimation becomes less efficient, as for instance with ill-configured input probes, or in blind situations when the axis of the unitary is unknown. Effective estimation by measuring the control qubit remains possible even when the input probe tends to align with the axis of the unitary, or with a fully depolarized input probe, while in these conditions conventional estimation becomes inoperative. Measurement of the probe qubit of the switched channel is also analyzed and shown to add useful capabilities for phase estimation. The results contribute to the ongoing identification and analysis of the properties and capabilities of switched quantum channels with indefinite order for information processing and uncover new possibilities for quantum estimation and qubit metrology.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.103.032615

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A generic qubit unitary operator affected by depolarizing noise is duplicated and inserted in a quantum switch process, realizing a superposition of causal orders. The characterization of the resulting switched quantum channel is worked out for its action on the joint state of the probe-control qubit pair. The switched channel is then specifically investigated for the important metrological task of phase estimation on the noisy unitary operator, with the performance assessed by the Fisher information, classical or quantum. A comparison is made with conventional techniques of estimation where the noisy unitary is directly probed in a one-stage or two-stage cascade with definite order or several uses of them with two or more qubits. In the switched channel with indefinite order, specific properties are reported, meaningful for estimation and not present with conventional techniques. It is shown that the control qubit, although it never directly interacts with the unitary, can nevertheless be measured alone for effective estimation, while discarding the probe qubit that interacts with the unitary. Also, measurement of the control qubit maintains the possibility of efficient estimation in difficult conditions where conventional estimation becomes less efficient, as for instance with ill-configured input probes, or in blind situations when the axis of the unitary is unknown. Effective estimation by measuring the control qubit remains possible even when the input probe tends to align with the axis of the unitary, or with a fully depolarized input probe, while in these conditions conventional estimation becomes inoperative. Measurement of the probe qubit of the switched channel is also analyzed and shown to add useful capabilities for phase estimation. The results contribute to the ongoing identification and analysis of the properties and capabilities of switched quantum channels with indefinite order for information processing and uncover new possibilities for quantum estimation and qubit metrology.
A generic qubit unitary operator affected by quantum noise is duplicated and inserted in a coherently superposed channel, superposing two paths offered to a probe qubit across the noisy unitary, and driven by a control qubit. A characterization is performed of the transformation realized by the superposed channel on the joint state of the probe-control qubit pair. The superposed channel is then specifically analyzed for the fundamental metrological task of phase estimation on the noisy unitary, with the performance assessed by the Fisher information, classical or quantum. A comparison is made with conventional estimation techniques and also with a quantum switched channel with indefinite causal order recently investigated for a similar task of phase estimation. In the analysis here, a first important observation is that the control qubit of the superposed channel, although it never directly interacts with the unitary being estimated, can nevertheless be measured alone for effective estimation, while discarding the probe qubit that interacts with the unitary. This property is also present with the switched channel but is inaccessible with conventional techniques. The optimal measurement of the control qubit here is characterized in general conditions. A second important observation is that the noise plays an essential role in coupling the control qubit to the unitary, and that the control qubit remains operative for phase estimation at very strong noise, even with a fully depolarizing noise, whereas conventional estimation and the switched channel become inoperative in these conditions. The results extend the analysis of the capabilities of coherently controlled channels which represent novel devices exploitable for quantum signal and information processing.
Optimal probe states and measurements are always required to achieve the best estimation precision in quantum metrology. In the actual physical environment, ubiquitous noise hinders estimation precision and amplifies the challenges of optimizing the probe states and measurements. In this study we extend a theoretical proposal, presented in Phys. Rev. A 103, 032615 (2021), to encompass noisy general Pauli channels for SU(2) phase estimation. By utilizing a superposition of different causal orders of two channels, we establish theoretically a probe-state-independent criterion for the estimation precision. We show that the probe-state-independent property results from the noncommutativity of the Kraus operators of the parameter-encoding channels. Based on this criterion, one can find some parameter-encoding channels without the requirement of precisely preparing the probe state. Moreover, our scheme requires only deterministic projection measurement on the control qubit. In this way, one can simultaneously avoid optimizing both the probe states and measurements. In addition, we also show that the estimation precision and probe-state-independent property of the indefinite causal order scheme are independent of representations of the Kraus operators. This alleviates the experimental challenges in realizing quantum channels. We demonstrate experimentally the advantages of the indefinite causal order for phase estimation of an SU(2) unitary transformation in the three kinds of quantum noise channels. Our result shows that the dynamic evolution of indefinite causal order can outperform the conventional cascaded estimation scenario at high noise levels, exhibiting high robustness and feasibility in practical estimation tasks.
This paper further explores the recent scheme of switched quantum channels with indefinite causal order applied to the reference metrological task of quantum phase estimation in the presence of noise. We especially extend the explorations, previously reported with depolarizing noise and thermal noise, to the class of Pauli noises, important to the qubit and not previously addressed. Nonstandard capabilities, not accessible with standard quantum phase estimation, are exhibited and analyzed, with significant properties that are specific to the Pauli noises, while other properties are found in common with the depolarizing noise or the thermal noise. The results show that the presence and the type of quantum noise are both crucial to the determination of the nonstandard capabilities from the switched channel with indefinite causal order, with a constructive action of noise reminiscent of stochastic resonance phenomena. The study contributes to a more comprehensive and systematic characterization of the roles and specificities of quantum noise in the operation of the novel devices of switched quantum channels with indefinite causal order.
Quantum theory allows the traversing of multiple channels in a superposition of different orders. When the order in which the channels are traversed is controlled by an auxiliary quantum system, various unknown parameters of the channels can be estimated by measuring only the control system, even when the state of the probe alone would be insensitive. Moreover, increasing the dimension of the control system increases the number of simultaneously estimable parameters, which has important metrological ramifications. We demonstrate this capability for simultaneously estimating both unitary and noise parameters, including multiple parameters from the same unitary such as rotation angles and axes and from noise channels such as depolarization, dephasing, and amplitude damping in arbitrary dimensions. We identify regimes of unlimited advantages, taking the form of p2{p}^{2}p2 smaller variances in estimation when the noise probability is $1\ensuremath{-}p$, for both single and multiparameter estimations when using our schemes relative to any comparable scheme whose causal order is definite.
We explore the performance of the metrology scheme by employing a quantum time flip during encoding, a specific case of processes with indefinite time direction, which we refer to as indefinite time directed metrology ( ITDM ). In the case of single parameter estimation of a unitary, we demonstrate that our protocol can achieve Heisenberg scaling (1/N) with product probe states, surpassing the standard quantum limit (1/N) , where N is the number of particles in the probe. We establish this by computing the quantum Fisher information ( QFI ) which is a lower bound on the root mean square error occurred during parameter estimation. Although we analytically prove the optimality of the symmetric product probe state in ITDM , entangled probe states produce a higher QFI than optimal product probes without enhancing scaling, highlighting the non-essentiality of entanglement. For phase estimation, we propose a single-qubit measurement on the control qubit that accomplishes near-optimal Fisher information and eventually reaches Heisenberg scaling. Our findings reveal the best orientation of product probe states in every pertinent situation, emphasizing its independence from the parameter to be estimated in the limiting case. Furthermore, we illustrate the benefits of ITDM in noisy metrology, outperforming existing techniques in some situations.
Entropic uncertainty relations quantify the limits on the predictability of quantum measurements. When the measured system is correlated with a quantum memory, these limits are described by the memory-assisted entropic uncertainty relation (MA-EUR). We examine the behavior of MA-EUR when the memory qubit undergoes noisy dynamics implemented via high-order controlled processes, namely, the quantum switch and the quantum time-flip. We consider a setting in which the control qubit is the very system on which the measurements are performed, while the target qubit serves as a noisy quantum memory. Focusing on Pauli channels, we show that feeding them into the quantum switch and the quantum time-flip can significantly reduce the total entropic uncertainty as compared to their direct application. Our results reveal that indefinite causal order and input-output direction can serve as resources to mitigate the effects of noise in the context of MA-EUR and its applications.