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arXiv:2111.11345 · Entropy

Stochastic Collisional Quantum Thermometry

Eoin O’Connor, Bassano Vacchini, Steve Campbell

Published Dec 6, 2021• 16 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We extend collisional quantum thermometry schemes to allow for stochasticity in the waiting time between successive collisions. We establish that introducing randomness through a suitable waiting time distribution, the Weibull distribution, allows us to significantly extend the parameter range for which an advantage over the thermal Fisher information is attained. These results are explicitly demonstrated for dephasing interactions and also hold for partial swap interactions. Furthermore, we show that the optimal measurements can be performed locally, thus implying that genuine quantum correlations do not play a role in achieving this advantage. We explicitly confirm this by examining the correlation properties for the deterministic collisional model.

DOI
10.3390/e23121634

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We extend collisional quantum thermometry schemes to allow for stochasticity in the waiting time between successive collisions. We establish that introducing randomness through a suitable waiting time distribution, the Weibull distribution, allows us to significantly extend the parameter range for which an advantage over the thermal Fisher information is attained. These results are explicitly demonstrated for dephasing interactions and also hold for partial swap interactions. Furthermore, we show that the optimal measurements can be performed locally, thus implying that genuine quantum correlations do not play a role in achieving this advantage. We explicitly confirm this by examining the correlation properties for the deterministic collisional model.
We introduce a general framework for thermometry based on collisional models, where ancillas probe the temperature of the environment through an intermediary system. This allows for the generation of correlated ancillas even if they are initially independent. Using tools from parameter estimation theory, we show through a minimal qubit model that individual ancillas can already outperform the thermal Cramer-Rao bound. In addition, due to the steady-state nature of our model, when measured collectively the ancillas always exhibit superlinear scalings of the Fisher information. This means that even collective measurements on pairs of ancillas will already lead to an advantage. As we find in our qubit model, such a feature may be particularly valuable for weak system-ancilla interactions. Our approach sets forth the notion of metrology in a sequential interactions setting, and may inspire further advances in quantum thermometry.
We investigate a quantum thermometry scheme-based collision model with Gaussian systems. A key open question of these schemes concerns the scaling of the quantum Fisher information (QFI) with the number of ancillas. In qubit-based implementations this question is difficult to assess, due to the exponentially growing size of the Hilbert space. Here we focus on Gaussian collision models, which allow for the scaling of the QFI to be evaluated for arbitrarily large sizes. This numerical flexibility enables us to explore the thermometric properties of the model for a wide range of configurations. Despite the infinite Markov order of the stochastic process of the model, we provide a simple phenomenological analysis for the behavior of the QFI, estimating the asymptotic Fisher information density and how the transient effects of correlations for an increasing number of ancillas depend on the physical parameters of the model. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We investigate the dephasing dynamics of a qubit as an effective mechanism for estimating the temperature of its surrounding environment for different symmetrizes. Our approach is fundamentally quantum, leveraging the qubit's susceptibility to decoherence without necessitating thermal equilibrium with the system under study. We also examine how symmetry properties affect the accuracy of information retrieval and the robustness of quantum information storage in such systems, highlighting their potential advantages in mitigating decoherence effects. The optimization of quantum Fisher information is performed with respect to both the interaction duration and the environmental temperature, focusing on Ohmic-like spectral density environments. Furthermore, we explicitly identify the optimal qubit measurement that attains the quantum Cramer-Rao bound for precision. Our findings reveal that optimal estimation arises from a complex interplay between the qubit's dephasing dynamics and the Ohmic characteristics of the environment with a particular focus on non-Hermitian systems that exhibit enhanced resilience to decoherence. Notably, optimal estimation does not occur when the qubit reaches a stationary state nor under conditions of complete dephasing.
Abstract We address the dephasing dynamics of the quantum Fisher information for the process of quantum thermometry with probes coupled to squeezed thermal baths via the nondemolition interaction. We also calculate the upper bound for the parameter estimation and investigate how the optimal estimation is affected by the initial conditions and decoherence, particularly the squeezing parameters. Moreover, the feasibility of the optimal measurement of the temperature is discussed in detail. Then, the results are generalized for entangled probes and the multi-qubit scenarios for probing the temperature are analysed. Our results show that the squeezing can decrease the number of channel uses for optimal thermometry. Comparing different schemes for multi-qubit estimation, we find that an increase in the number of the qubits, interacting with the channel, does not necessarily vary the precision of estimating the temperature. Besides, we discuss the enhancement of the quantum thermometry using the parallel strategy and starting from the W state.
One of the main advantages expected from using quantum probes as thermometers is noninvasiveness, i.e., a negligible perturbation to the thermal sample. However, invasiveness is rarely investigated explicitly. Here, focusing on a spin probe undergoing pure dephasing due to the interaction with a bosonic sample, we show that there is a nontrivial relation between the information on the temperature gained by a quantum probe and the heat absorbed by the sample due to the interaction. We show that time-optimal probing schemes obtained by considering the total experiment time as a resource also have the benefit of limiting the heat absorbed by the sample in each shot of the experiment. For such time-optimal protocols, we show that it is advantageous to have strong probe-sample coupling, since in this regime the accuracy increases linearly with the coupling strength, while the amount of heat per shot saturates to a finite value. Since in pure-dephasing models the absorbed heat corresponds to the external work needed to couple and decouple the probe and the sample, our results also represent a first step towards the analysis of the thermodynamic and energetic cost of quantum thermometry.
Abstract Many real-world tasks include some kind of parameter estimation, i.e. the determination of a parameter encoded in a probability distribution. Often, such probability distributions arise from stochastic processes. For a stationary stochastic process with temporal correlations, the random variables that constitute it are identically distributed but not independent. This is the case, for instance, for quantum continuous measurements. In this article, we derive the asymptotic Fisher information rate for a stationary process with finite Markov order. We give a precise expression for this rate which is determined by the process’ conditional distribution up to its Markov order. Second, we demonstrate with suitable examples that correlations may both enhance or hamper the metrological precision. Indeed, unlike for entropic information quantities, in general nothing can be said about the sub- or super-additivity of the joint Fisher information in the presence of correlations. To illustrate our results, we apply them to thermometry on an Ising spin chain, considering nearest-neighbour and next-to-nearest neighbour coupling. In this case, the asymptotic Fisher information rate is directly connected to the specific heat capacity of the spin chain. We observe that the presence of correlations strongly enhances the estimation precision in an anti-ferromagnetic chain, while in a ferromagnetic chain this is not the case.