Postselection can compress the metrological information and improve sensitivity in the presence of certain types of technical noise. Postselected quantum metrology with pure states has been significantly advanced recently. However, extending this framework to mixed states leads to formidable challenges, such as the difficulty in searching for lossless postselection measurements or even the loss of metrological information. In this work, we leverage the intuition for the lossless postselection of pure states and generalize the theory to the lossless postselection of a class of mixed states, dubbed quasi-pure states. We illustrate our findings in postselected quantum imaging, unitary estimation problems, and show that the quasi-pure structure can be universally engineered through only classical correlation with an ancilla. Our findings extend the utility of postselection techniques to scenarios with decoherence and also offer new perspectives to foundational questions in quantum information geometry.
Postselection can compress the metrological information and improve sensitivity in the presence of certain types of technical noise. Postselected quantum metrology with pure states has been significantly advanced recently. However, extending this framework to mixed states leads to formidable challenges, such as the difficulty in searching for lossless postselection measurements or even the loss of metrological information. In this work, we leverage the intuition for the lossless postselection of pure states and generalize the theory to the lossless postselection of a class of mixed states, dubbed quasi-pure states. We illustrate our findings in postselected quantum imaging, unitary estimation problems, and show that the quasi-pure structure can be universally engineered through only classical correlation with an ancilla. Our findings extend the utility of postselection techniques to scenarios with decoherence and also offer new perspectives to foundational questions in quantum information geometry.
The postselected quantum metrological scheme is especially advantageous when the final measurements are either very noisy or expensive in practical experiments. In this Letter, we put forward a general theory on the compression channels in postselected quantum metrology. We define the basic notions characterizing the compression quality and illuminate the underlying structure of lossless compression channels. Previous experiments on postselected optical phase estimation and weak-value amplification are shown to be particular cases of this general theory. Furthermore, for two categories of bipartite systems, we show that the compression loss can be made arbitrarily small even when the compression channel acts only on one subsystem. These findings can be employed to distribute quantum measurements so that the measurement noise and cost are dramatically reduced.
In quantum metrology, information about unknown parameters θ = ( θ 1 , ... , θ M ) is accessed by measuring probe states ρ ̂ θ . In experimental settings where copies of ρ ̂ θ can be produced rapidly (e.g., in optics), the information-extraction bottleneck can stem from high postprocessing costs or detector saturation. In these regimes, it is desirable to compress the information encoded in ρ ̂ θ ⊗ n into m < n copies of a postselected state: ρ ̂ θ ps ⊗ m . Remarkably, recent works have shown that, in the absence of noise, compression can be lossless, for m / n arbitrarily small. Here, we fully characterize the family of filters that enable lossless compression. Further, we study the effect of noise on quantum-metrological information amplification. Motivated by experiments, we consider a popular family of filters, which we show is optimal for qubit probes. Further, we show that, for the optimal filter in this family, compression is still lossless if noise acts after the filter. However, in the presence of depolarizing noise before filtering, compression is lossy. In both cases, information extraction can be implemented significantly better than simply discarding a constant fraction of the states, even in the presence of strong noise. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Preserving the precision of the parameter of interest in the presence of environmental decoherence is an important yet challenging task in dissipative quantum sensing. In this work, we study quantum metrology when the decoherence effect is unraveled by a set of quantum measurements, dubbed quantum measurement encoding. In our case, the estimation parameter is encoded into a quantum state through a quantum measurement, unlike the parameter encoding through a unitary channel in the decoherence-free case or trace-preserving quantum channels in the case of decoherence. We identify conditions for a precision-preserving measurement encoding. These conditions can be employed to transfer metrological information from one subsystem to another through quantum measurements. Furthermore, postselected non-Hermitian sensing can also be viewed as quantum sensing with measurement encoding. When the precision-preserving conditions are violated in non-Hermitian sensing, we derive a universal formula for the loss of precision. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Quantum mechanical systems can be used to out perform classical ones in several tasks. For instance, quantum correlations can be employed to beat the shot-noise limit in metrology protocols. Such parameter estimation methods are crucial for both advances in science and the development of technologies. Almost all quantum technologies operate with some level of noise and how quantum-enhancement fares in the presence of noise is still unclear. Here we show that, when a system in mixed multipartite quantum state is used to estimate a parameter, the information must be decoded by coherent interactions between the parts of the probe. On the other hand, noiseless quantum metrology protocols are adaptively additive for any pure entangled states, that is, no coherent processing is necessary in this case. This leads to an operational interpretation for the ability of performing coherent interactions in noisy parameter estimation and highlights a cornerstone difference between mixed and pure states. This result has fundamental importance in the search for the source of quantum advantage and it also has practical relevance for the designing of new high-precision-measurement devices.
Quantum-enhanced metrology can be achieved by entangling a probe with an auxiliary system, passing the probe through an interferometer, and subsequently making measurements on both the probe and auxiliary system. Conceptually, this corresponds to performing metrology with the purification of a (mixed) probe state. We demonstrate via the quantum Fisher information how to design mixed states whose purifications are an excellent metrological resource. In particular, we give examples of mixed states with purifications that allow (near) Heisenberg-limited metrology and provide examples of entangling Hamiltonians that can generate these states. Finally, we present the optimal measurement and parameter-estimation procedure required to realize these sensitivities (i.e., that saturate the quantum Cram\'er-Rao bound). Since pure states of comparable metrological usefulness are typically challenging to generate, it may prove easier to use this approach of entanglement and measurement of an auxiliary system. An example where this may be the case is atom interferometry, where entanglement with optical systems is potentially easier to engineer than the atomic interactions required to produce nonclassical atomic states.
We analyze simultaneous quantum estimations of multiple parameters with postselection measurements in terms of a trade-off relation. The system, or a sensor, is characterized by a set of parameters, interacts with a measurement apparatus (MA), and then is postselected onto a set of orthonormal final states. Measurements of the MA yield an estimation of the parameters. We first derive classical and quantum Cramér–Rao lower bounds and then discuss their archivable condition and the trade-offs in the postselection measurements, in general, including the case when a sensor is in a mixed state. Its whole information can, in principle, be obtained via the MA, which is not possible without postselection. We then apply the framework to simultaneous measurements of phase and its fluctuation as an example.