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arXiv:2512.21157

Information-Scrambling-Enhanced Quantum Sensing Beyond the Standard Quantum Limit

Yangyang Ge, Haoyu Zhou, Wen Zheng, Xiang-Min Yu, Wei Fang, Zhenchuan Zhang, Wanli Huang, Xiang Deng, Haoyang Cai, Xianke Li, Kun Zhou, Hanxin Che, Tao Zhang, Lichang Ji, Yu Zhang, Jie Zhao, Shao-Xiong Li, Xinsheng Tan, Yang Yu

quant-phSubmitted Dec 24, 2025• Announced Dec 25, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

Quantum sensing promises measurement precision beyond classical limits, but its practical realization is often hindered by decoherence and the challenges of generating and stabilizing entanglement in large-scale systems. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a scalable, scrambling-enhanced quantum sensing protocol, referred to as butterfly metrology, implemented on a cross-shaped superconducting quantum processor. By harnessing quantum information scrambling, the protocol converts local interactions into delocalized metrologically useful correlations, enabling robust signal amplification through interference of the scrambled and polarized quantum states. We validate the time-reversal ability via Loschmidt echo measurements and quantify the information scrambling through out-of-time-ordered correlators, establishing the essential quantum resources of our protocol. Our measurements reveal that the sensing sensitivity surpasses the standard quantum limit (SQL) with increasing qubit number, reaching 3.78 in a 9-qubit configuration, compared to the SQL of 3.0. The scheme further exhibits inherent robustness to coherent control errors and probed signal noise. This work demonstrates a readily scalable path toward practical quantum sensing advantages with prevalent experimental platforms.

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Quantum sensing promises measurement precision beyond classical limits, but its practical realization is often hindered by decoherence and the challenges of generating and stabilizing entanglement in large-scale systems. Here, we experimentally demonstrate a scalable, scrambling-enhanced quantum sensing protocol, referred to as butterfly metrology, implemented on a cross-shaped superconducting quantum processor. By harnessing quantum information scrambling, the protocol converts local interactions into delocalized metrologically useful correlations, enabling robust signal amplification through interference of the scrambled and polarized quantum states. We validate the time-reversal ability via Loschmidt echo measurements and quantify the information scrambling through out-of-time-ordered correlators, establishing the essential quantum resources of our protocol. Our measurements reveal that the sensing sensitivity surpasses the standard quantum limit (SQL) with increasing qubit number, reaching 3.78 in a 9-qubit configuration, compared to the SQL of 3.0. The scheme further exhibits inherent robustness to coherent control errors and probed signal noise. This work demonstrates a readily scalable path toward practical quantum sensing advantages with prevalent experimental platforms.
Quantum sensing leverages quantum resources to surpass the standard quantum limit, yet many existing protocols rely on the preparation of complex entangled states and Hamiltonian engineering, posing challenges for universality and scalability. Here, we report an experimental realization of a universal protocol, known as Butterfly Metrology, proposed in [arXiv:2411.12794], demonstrating a scrambling-based approach for quantum-enhanced sensing on a superconducting quantum processor. By exploiting many-body information scrambling, we observe quantum-enhanced sensitivity to an encoded phase beyond the standard quantum limit, with a scaling consistent with a factor-of-two of the Heisenberg limit for system sizes of up to 10 qubits. Importantly, we experimentally establish a connection between the enhanced sensitivity and the dynamics of the out-of-time-order correlator (OTOC), and show that the buildup of scrambling-induced genuine multipartite entanglement underlies the observed sensitivity enhancement. Our results demonstrate a scalable and practical approach for quantum-enhanced sensing in interacting many-body quantum systems.
We introduce a novel protocol, which enables Heisenberg-limited quantum-enhanced sensing using the dynamics of any interacting many-body Hamiltonian. Our approach - dubbed butterfly metrology - utilizes a single application of forward and reverse time evolution to produce a coherent superposition of a "scrambled" and "unscrambled" quantum state. In this way, we create metrologically-useful long-range entanglement from generic local quantum interactions. The sensitivity of butterfly metrology is given by a sum of local out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) - the prototypical diagnostic of quantum information scrambling. Our approach broadens the landscape of platforms capable of performing quantum-enhanced metrology; as an example, we provide detailed blueprints and numerical studies demonstrating a route to scalable quantum-enhanced sensing in ensembles of solid-state spin defects.
Quantum information scrambling, the dispersal of local information into many-body degrees of freedom, provides a powerful mechanism for generating large-scale correlations and entanglement essential for quantum-enhanced metrology. However, experimentally verifying such quantum-enhanced metrology remains a demanding task. Here, we correlate thousands of spins by engineering chaotic scrambling dynamics in a solid-state nuclear spin system. By leveraging the newly developed scramblon theory, we reveal exponential scaling in both the quantum Fisher information and the signal response to a phase shift. The signal response achieves a correlation-enabled enhancement of 33(2)33(2)33(2) dB over uncorrelated spins. After accounting for signal loss due to imperfect time reversal in the readout stage, we obtain a total metrological gain of 18(1) dB with a phase sensitivity of 40(3) μrad{\mathrm{μrad}}μrad. Our results bridge quantum chaos with practical quantum metrology, establishing reversible scrambling dynamics as a powerful resource for precision measurements.
Quantum scrambling describes the spreading of information into many degrees of freedom in quantum systems, such that the information is no longer accessible locally but becomes distributed throughout the system. This idea can explain how quantum systems become classical and acquire a finite temperature, or how in black holes the information about the matter falling in is seemingly erased. We probe the exponential scrambling of a multiparticle system near a bistable point in phase space and utilize it for entanglement-enhanced metrology. A time-reversal protocol is used to observe a simultaneous exponential growth of both the metrological gain and the out-of-time-order correlator, thereby experimentally verifying the relation between quantum metrology and quantum information scrambling. Our results show that rapid scrambling dynamics capable of exponentially fast entanglement generation are useful for practical metrology, resulting in a 6.8(4)-decibel gain beyond the standard quantum limit.
We investigate quantum-enhanced time-reversal-based metrology using the central spin model, in which a single ancilla spin of magnitude ScenS_{\rm cen}Scen​ mediates interactions between NNN bath spins through a star-graph topology. We demonstrate that the SATIN (Signal Amplification Through Time-reversal Interaction) echo protocol can be implemented in this setup to achieve a Fisher information of N2/eN^2/eN2/e with the collective ⟨Jy⟩\langle J_y\rangle⟨Jy​⟩ readout, corresponding to a 4.34 dB4.34\,\mathrm{dB}4.34dB offset from the Heisenberg limit. Furthermore, we establish that this platform provides a pathway to perform the butterfly echo protocol by conjugating each evolution step with a random collective bath rotation, thereby achieving axis-agnostic Heisenberg-scaled sensing. Crucially, with a small N−N-N−independent number of random steps, the butterfly echo reaches a Fisher information of N2/4N^2/4N2/4 (6 dB6\,\mathrm{dB}6dB below the Heisenberg limit) for any unknown encoding axis, with the plateau gain tracking the Haar limit. Finally, we demonstrate that the central-spin magnitude ScenS_{\rm cen}Scen​ provides a powerful knob to reduce the optimal protocol timescale without altering the metrological ceiling or the circuit depth required to reach isotropy. The proposed scheme is relevant to cavity QED and NMR quantum processors, where the central spin architecture arises naturally.
We propose and analyze a versatile and efficient multiparameter quantum sensing protocol, which simultaneously estimates many non-commuting and time-dependent signals that are coherently or incoherently coupled to sensing particles. Even in the presence of control imperfections and readout errors, our approach can detect exponentially many parameters in the system size while maintaining the optimal scaling of sensitivity. To accomplish this, scrambling dynamics are leveraged to map distinct signals to unique patterns of bitstring measurements, which distinguishes a large number of signals without significant sensitivity loss. Based on this principle, we develop a computationally efficient protocol utilizing random global Clifford unitaries and evaluate its performance both analytically and numerically. Our protocol naturally extends to scrambling dynamics generated by random local Clifford circuits, local random unitary circuits (RUCs), and ergodic Hamiltonian evolution--commonly realized in near-term quantum hardware--and opens the door to applications ranging from precise noise benchmarking of quantum dynamics to learning time-dependent Hamiltonians.