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arXiv:2401.04825 · Physical Review Letters

Exceptional-Point Sensors Offer No Fundamental Signal-to-Noise Ratio Enhancement

Hudson A. Loughlin, Vivishek Sudhir

Published Jun 13, 2024• 77 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Exceptional-point (EP) sensors exhibit a square-root resonant frequency bifurcation in response to external perturbations, making them appear attractive for sensing applications. However, there is an open debate as to whether or not this sensitivity advantage is negated by additional noise in the system. We settle this debate by showing that increased fundamental noises of quantum and thermal origin in EP sensors, and in particular self-excited (or PT-symmetric) EP sensors, negate the sensitivity benefit. Accordingly, EP sensing schemes are only beneficial either with further quantum enhancement or if compared to sensors limited by technical noise. As many modern sensors are limited by technical noise, EP sensors may still find practical uses despite their lack of a fundamental advantage. Alternatively, we propose a quantum-enhanced EP sensor that achieves a sensing advantage even when limited by quantum or thermal fluctuations.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.132.243601

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Exceptional-point (EP) sensors exhibit a square-root resonant frequency bifurcation in response to external perturbations, making them appear attractive for sensing applications. However, there is an open debate as to whether or not this sensitivity advantage is negated by additional noise in the system. We settle this debate by showing that increased fundamental noises of quantum and thermal origin in EP sensors, and in particular self-excited (or PT-symmetric) EP sensors, negate the sensitivity benefit. Accordingly, EP sensing schemes are only beneficial either with further quantum enhancement or if compared to sensors limited by technical noise. As many modern sensors are limited by technical noise, EP sensors may still find practical uses despite their lack of a fundamental advantage. Alternatively, we propose a quantum-enhanced EP sensor that achieves a sensing advantage even when limited by quantum or thermal fluctuations.
Exceptional-point (EP) sensing has attracted considerable interest because of its anomalous response scaling. However, recent studies have shown that the enhanced response near an EP is inevitably accompanied by amplified quantum noise, fundamentally limiting the achievable signalto-noise ratio (SNR). Here, we propose a fundamentally different route toward non-Hermitian quantum sensing based on symmetry-protected noise suppression rather than response amplification. We develop a fully quantum continuous-variable model that unifies parity-time (PT) and anti-paritytime(APT) symmetries within a single framework. Exploiting the incompatibility between these two symmetries, we uncover a non-Hermitian Dirac eigenspectrum and reveal a hidden symmetryprotected phase transition embedded in the Hamiltonian spectrum. Remarkably, this hidden phasetransition simultaneously constitutes a symmetry-protected vacuum-noise fixed point, where collective three-mode quadratures exhibit suppressed quantum fluctuations despite the absence of any anomalous spectral response. As a consequence, quantum sensing is enhanced through the suppression of excess quantum noise while maintaining a finite response sensitivity, establishing a sensing mechanism fundamentally different from conventional EP-based approaches. These results reveal an unexpected connection between hidden symmetry, quantum fluctuations, and non-Hermitian quantum metrology, and establish noise suppression as an alternative paradigm for non-Hermitian quantum sensing.
Exceptional points (EPs) exhibit strongly enhanced spectral responses and are therefore promising candidates for sensing applications. Whether these non-Hermitian degeneracies provide a genuine advantage in the quantum regime has been the subject of ongoing debate. Here, we address this issue within a scattering-matrix formalism for sensing with coherent light, which allows the quantum Fisher information (QFI) to be evaluated directly from experimentally accessible scattering data without introducing additional noise channels beyond those inherent to the scattering process. We analyze both nondegenerate and degenerate scattering-matrix poles, including EPs of arbitrary order, and show that the QFI per incoming photon flux is governed by three key factors: the decay rate of the resonant mode, the strength of the spectral response associated with non-normality, and the adjustment between the scattering states and the information source. For spatially localized perturbations, this implies that the Fisher information is fully determined by the local density of states at the perturbation site. Within this framework, we demonstrate that EPs can enhance the QFI compared to isolated modes or diabolic points with identical decay rates, and that the QFI can be further increased by moving away from the EP toward parameter regimes where non-Hermitian linewidth splitting reduces the decay rate of one mode. We further show that sufficiently small additional internal losses do not alter this overall picture, thereby providing a unified and experimentally relevant perspective on the design of quantum-limited non-Hermitian sensors.
Open quantum systems can have exceptional points (EPs), degeneracies where both eigenvalues and eigenvectors coalesce. Recently, it has been proposed and demonstrated that EPs can enhance the performance of sensors in terms of amplification of a detected signal. However, typically amplification of signals also increases the system noise, and it has not yet been shown that an EP sensor can have improved signal-to-noise performance. We develop a quantum noise theory to calculate the signal-to-noise performance of an EP sensor. We use the quantum Fisher information to extract a lower bound for the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and show that parametrically improved SNR is possible. Finally, we construct a specific experimental protocol for sensing using an EP amplifier near its lasing threshold and heterodyne signal detection that achieves the optimal scaling predicted by the Fisher bound. Our results can be generalized to higher order EPs for any bosonic non-Hermitian system with linear interactions.
Central to non-Hermitian sensing is the question of whether exceptional points (EPs) can make weak perturbations easier to detect. We show that despite enhanced spectral response, in finite-dimensional Lindblad systems with a unique stationary state and a nonzero relaxation gap, EPs offer no fundamental advantage in how the observation time required for reliable detection of a weak perturbation scales with the perturbation strength. We nevertheless demonstrate that by selectively choosing perturbations that enhance the quantum Fisher information rate, EPs can shorten the observation time needed to reach a predefined detection accuracy relative to a comparable non-EP reference at the same decay rate. As an illustration, we show using an optomechanical model at an EP that we can detect a weak force through the cavity output at the same reliability in less time than a non-EP reference. Our results establish fundamental limits on perturbation detection at EPs and can guide the design of faster non-Hermitian sensors based on optomechanical resonators, superconducting qubits, and trapped ions.
Nonlinear exceptional points (NEPs) were proposed to circumvent the noise--responsivity cancellation that limits linear exceptional-point sensors. At an NEP, the stationary frequency response can be singular while the Hamiltonian Petermann factor remains finite, suggesting a genuine signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) enhancement. Yet recent model-specific analyses of nonlinear fluctuations have reached conflicting conclusions. We prove that any singular stationary frequency response requires a fixed-point bifurcation of the nonlinear dynamics. In local fluctuation regimes, the singularities in responsivity and long-time frequency uncertainty are both set by the critical relaxation rate, leading to exact cancellation in the SNR and precluding any divergent enhancement. Furthermore, we derive a path-information bound that applies across both local and nonlinear fluctuation regimes and places a finite ceiling on the long-time SNR enhancement. Notably, this upper bound is attainable in the local fluctuation regime, implying that frequency readout under such parameter settings is information-optimal.