The challenge of developing high-precision temperature sensors is an important issue that has recently received a lot of attention. In this work, we introduce an estimation technique to precisely measure the temperature of a quantum reservoir using a Kerr-nonlinear resonator with drive. Thermalization in our suggested protocol is assessed using Uhlmann-Jozsa fidelity, and then we utilize quantum Fisher information to evaluate the metrological potential of our thermometry scheme. We observe that increasing the Kerr nonlinearity coefficient and driving amplitude significantly enhances precision in the temperature estimation. Furthermore, we also explore the underlying physical mechanisms by analyzing probe purity in the steady state and evaluating the performance of homodyne versus heterodyne detection methods. Our results demonstrate that neither of these Gaussian measurements is optimal; instead, optimal homodyne detection always surpasses heterodyne detection.
The challenge of developing high-precision temperature sensors is an important issue that has recently received a lot of attention. In this work, we introduce an estimation technique to precisely measure the temperature of a quantum reservoir using a Kerr-nonlinear resonator with drive. Thermalization in our suggested protocol is assessed using Uhlmann-Jozsa fidelity, and then we utilize quantum Fisher information to evaluate the metrological potential of our thermometry scheme. We observe that increasing the Kerr nonlinearity coefficient and driving amplitude significantly enhances precision in the temperature estimation. Furthermore, we also explore the underlying physical mechanisms by analyzing probe purity in the steady state and evaluating the performance of homodyne versus heterodyne detection methods. Our results demonstrate that neither of these Gaussian measurements is optimal; instead, optimal homodyne detection always surpasses heterodyne detection.
The challenge of developing high-precision temperature sensors is an important issue that has recently received a lot of attention. In this work, we introduce an estimation technique to precisely measure the temperature of a quantum reservoir using a Kerr-nonlinear resonator with drive. Thermalization in our suggested protocol is assessed using Uhlmann-Jozsa fidelity, then we utilize quantum Fisher information to evaluate the metrological potential of our thermometery scheme. We observe that increasing the Kerr-nonlinearity coefficient and driving amplitude significantly enhances precision in the temperature estimation. Furthermore, we also explore the underlying physical mechanisms by analyzing probe purity in the steady state and evaluating the performance of homodyne versus heterodyne detection methods. Our results demonstrate that neither of these Gaussian measurements is optimal; instead, optimal homodyne detection always surpasses heterodyne detection.
Optomechanical systems are promising platforms for controlled light-matter interactions.They are capable of providing several fundamental and practical novel features when the mechanical oscillator is cooled down to nearly reach its ground state.In this framework, measuring the effective temperature of the oscillator is perhaps the most relevant step in the characterization of those systems.In conventional schemes, the cavity is driven strongly, and the overall system is well-described by a linear (Gaussian preserving) Hamiltonian.Here, we depart from this regime by considering an undriven optomechanical system via non-Gaussian radiation-pressure interaction.To measure the temperature of the mechanical oscillator, initially in a thermal state, we use light as a probe to coherently interact with it and create an entangled state.We show that the optical probe gets a nonlinear phase, resulting from the non-Gaussian interaction, and undergoes an incoherent phase diffusion process.To efficiently infer the temperature from the entangled light-matter state, we propose using a nonlinear Kerr medium before a homodyne detector.Remarkably, placing the Kerr medium enhances the precision to nearly saturate the ultimate quantum bound given by the quantum Fisher information.Furthermore, it also simplifies the thermometry procedure as it makes the choice of the homodyne local phase independent of the temperature.
Accurate simultaneous estimation of temperature and effective detuning is crucial for understanding, controlling, and optimizing optomechanical systems. Temperature characterizes the thermal state and mechanical properties, while detuning governs the light-motion interaction, influencing stability and enabling diverse quantum applications. Precise estimates of these parameters are therefore essential to exploit the full potential of such systems in high-precision metrology and the exploration of macroscopic quantum phenomena. In this work we investigate the simultaneous estimation of the effective detuning Δ and the mirror temperature T in a Fabry-Pérot cavity system, with a particular focus on the performance of heterodyne detection. Using analytical expressions for the quantum Fisher information matrices (QFIM) derived from the symmetric logarithmic derivative (SLD) and the right logarithmic derivative (RLD), we demonstrate that the quantum Cramér-Rao bound associated with the RLD is consistently lower than that based on the SLD, highlighting superior estimation precision. This gap between the SLD- and RLD-based bounds becomes especially pronounced in certain physical regimes, emphasizing the relevance of choosing the appropriate formalism in noncommutative estimation scenarios. From a physical perspective, the improved estimation performance stems from the fact that temperature directly influences thermal fluctuations in the mechanical mode, while the effective detuning modulates the strength of the optomechanical interaction, shaping the information exchange between optical and mechanical subsystems. We showed that using higher optical power, greater cavity decay rate, increased photon and phonon numbers, and reduced coupling strength improves the precision of both parameter estimates. These physical mechanisms affect the available quantum resources in the system—such as squeezing, entanglement, and state purity—which in turn determine the ultimate sensitivity achievable. Furthermore, our analysis shows that heterodyne detection can, under certain conditions, approach the ultimate precision set by the QFIM. Thus, a measurement strategy based on heterodyne detection could enable the efficient estimation of temperature, achieving performance close to that of ideal quantum-limited strategies.
We investigate quantum thermometry in a driven--dissipative Kerr cavity coupled to a thermal reservoir. The system exhibits a finite-size precursor of a dissipative phase transition, characterized by a pronounced minimum of the Liouvillian gap and a sharp jump in the steady-state physical observables such as average photon number at the critical driving strength. We show that this regime leads to strong enhancement of the quantum Fisher information (QFI) for temperature estimation. Using an effective two-branch description, we show that the enhancement originates from temperature-induced redistribution of the weight factors in photon number distribution between low- and high-photon-number branches, which is described by an effective binary Fisher information. By optimizing the coherent drive, the enhanced response persists over an extended low-temperature, low-thermal-occupation regime and yields a favorable relative temperature-uncertainty bound. These results identify finite-size precursors of dissipative phase transitions in Kerr-cavity platforms as useful resources for tunable nonequilibrium quantum thermometry. We further show that the predicted thermometric enhancement is accessible in a parameter regime compatible with circuit quantum electrodynamics (circuit-QED) platforms.
The precise measurement of weak optomechanical coupling is fundamentally limited by the inevitable thermal noise and the stringent parameter control. To overcome these limitations, we propose what we feel is a novel sensing scheme based on self-Kerr nonlinearity. Remarkably, the self-Kerr nonlinearity induced by the Born-Oppenheimer (BO) adiabatic separation between the optical and mechanical modes enables a sensitivity scaling law proportional to g −7/3 , which is the source of extraordinary sensitivity to weak optomechanical coupling. By developing an effective indirectly coupled dual-cavity model featuring self-Kerr nonlinearity and applying Gaussian quantum information theory, we demonstrate that a weak optomechanical coupling can be detected with both an excellent signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and high precision. Specifically, our scheme improves the SNR and precision by several orders of magnitude, surpassing the capabilities of conventional nonlinear response methods. This work elucidates a fundamental mechanism based on self-Kerr nonlinearity for achieving ultra-high sensitivity in non-Hermitian sensors, thereby paving the way for the development of high-performance sensors in anharmonic systems and advancing the field of ultrasensitive quantum metrology.
Dissipative phase transitions in the driven-dissipative Kerr parametric oscillator offer a promising route for realizing criticality-enhanced quantum sensing based on continuous measurements. However, achieving such enhancement through realistic measurement schemes remains an outstanding challenge. Here, we extend the backaction-evasion strategy introduced in our earlier work for the Gaussian linear case [arXiv:2511.22248 (2025)] to analyze how the quantum and classical Fisher information scale with the Kerr nonlinearity at dissipative critical points. Our results show that backaction-evading homodyne monitoring achieves enhanced photon-number scaling that surpasses the standard quantum limit, and significantly outperforms alternative protocols such as continuous photon counting. As an additional methodological contribution, we also implement and benchmark time-discrete approximation schemes with improved statistical convergence properties. We use these methods to compute the classical Fisher information for continuous homodyne detection, and demonstrate that they provide efficient access to this quantity near dissipative critical points, thereby extending the reach of existing methods.