The extreme sensitivity of chaotic systems to external perturbations makes them natural candidates for sensing applications. We propose a single-shot echo-based protocol for estimating small rotations about an unknown axis that leverages random symmetric probe states prepared via chaotic dynamics. In contrast to previous protocols for this axis-agnostic rotation sensing problem that depend on difficult-to-prepare anticoherent states, the random probe states used in our protocol can be prepared via constant-depth chaotic circuits composed of random one-axis twisting pulses. We demonstrate analytically that our protocol achieves Heisenberg scaling relative to an arbitrary rotation axis that need not be a priori known. We also investigate the effects of collective and single-particle dephasing in our protocol using analytical and numerical tools. While the requirements on dephasing rates to maintain Heisenberg sensitivity are strict, they are achievable in near-term experiments, for instance, for magnetometric rotosensing with high-spin lanthanide atoms such as dysprosium-164.
The extreme sensitivity of chaotic systems to external perturbations makes them natural candidates for sensing applications. We propose a single-shot echo-based protocol for estimating small rotations about an unknown axis that leverages random symmetric probe states prepared via chaotic dynamics. In contrast to previous protocols for this axis-agnostic rotation sensing problem that depend on difficult-to-prepare anticoherent states, the random probe states used in our protocol can be prepared via constant-depth chaotic circuits composed of random one-axis twisting pulses. We demonstrate analytically that our protocol achieves Heisenberg scaling relative to an arbitrary rotation axis that need not be a priori known. We also investigate the effects of collective and single-particle dephasing in our protocol using analytical and numerical tools. While the requirements on dephasing rates to maintain Heisenberg sensitivity are strict, they are achievable in near-term experiments, for instance, for magnetometric rotosensing with high-spin lanthanide atoms such as dysprosium-164.
We investigate quantum-enhanced time-reversal-based metrology using the central spin model, in which a single ancilla spin of magnitude Scen mediates interactions between N 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/e with the collective ⟨Jy⟩ readout, corresponding to a 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−independent number of random steps, the butterfly echo reaches a Fisher information of N2/4 (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 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.
Anticoherent states are known to enable Heisenberg-limited precision measurements of external fields B→ = Bnˆ along arbitrary, apriori unknown rotation axes ˆn. In this paper we propose efficient protocols for producing approximate anticoherent states using random circuit dynamics acting on a single large spin S→. In particular, we propose two circuit models (Brownian and Random One-Axis Twist) to efficiently generate anticoherent spin states. Using the Choi-Jamio lkowski isomorphism (channel-state duality), we demonstrate that the behavior of these two models is identical given sufficiently short twisting times, and that these models can reach approximate anticoherence in constant circuit depth in the large-S limit.
Twist-untwist protocols for quantum metrology consist of a serial application of (1) unitary nonlinear dynamics (e.g., spin squeezing or Kerr nonlinearity), (2) parameterized dynamics $U(\ensuremath{\phi})$ (e.g., a collective rotation or phase space displacement), and (3) time reversed application of step 1. Such protocols are known to produce states that allow Heisenberg scaling for experimentally accessible estimators of $\ensuremath{\phi}$ even when the nonlinearities are applied for times much shorter than required to produce Schr\"odinger cat states. In this work, we prove that, asymptotically in the number of particles, twist-untwist protocols provide the lowest estimation error among quantum metrology protocols that utilize two calls to a weakly nonlinear evolution and a readout involving only first and second moments of a total spin operator $\stackrel{P\vec}{n}\ifmmode\cdot\else\textperiodcentered\fi{}\stackrel{P\vec}{J}$. We consider the following physical settings: all-to-all interactions generated by one-axis twisting Jz2 (e.g., interacting Bose gases), constant finite range spin-spin interactions of distinguishable or bosonic atoms (e.g., trapped ions or Rydberg atoms, or lattice bosons). In these settings, we further show that the optimal twist-untwist protocols asymptotically achieve 85% and 92% of the respective quantum Cram\'er-Rao bounds. We show that the error of a twist-untwist protocol can be decreased by a factor of L without an increase in the noise of the spin measurement if the twist-untwist protocol can be noiselessly iterated as an L layer quantum alternating operator ansatz.
Phase estimation with potentially large phase values, i.e., with large dynamic range, has many applications in quantum metrology, for example to atomic clocks. A recently proposed phase estimation scheme approaches the Heisenberg scaling in this global setting using sequences of increasingly squeezed Gaussian states as probes and adaptively chosen, potentially mid-circuit, measurements. In this work, we first observe that the pattern of increase in the squeezing of the probes is applicable even to states with some non-Gaussian features. We then propose an experimentally feasible version of this phase estimation scheme, based on the alternating application of one-axis twist (OAT) operations and rotations. Our protocols are explicitly described in terms of multiple OAT angles whose durations decrease polynomially with system size and spin-squeezing parameters that decay as N−μ, with μ>2/3 in most cases. Using numerical computation of the system-size dependence N−ν of the Bayesian mean-squared error of an estimator, we show that these states are suitable for use in the phase estimation scheme, and highlight the protocols to achieve ν=17/9 and 53/27 using two and three OAT operations respectively in the last adaptation stage. We also analyze the limited non-Gaussianity of the resulting probe states and discuss the role of non-Gaussianity in this protocol more generally. Finally, we analyze how robust these protocols are with respect to imperfections such as particle number fluctuations and coherent control fluctuations.
Quantum metrology and sensing seek advantages in estimating an unknown parameter of some quantum state or channel, using entanglement such as spin squeezing produced by one-axis twists or other quantum resources. In particular, qubit phase estimation, or rotation sensing, appears as a ubiquitous problem with applications to electric field sensing, magnetometry, atomic clocks, and gyroscopes. By adopting the Bayesian formalism to the phase estimation problem to account for limited initial knowledge about the value of the phase, we formulate variational metrology and treat the state preparation (or encoding) and measurement (or decoding) procedures as parameterized quantum circuits. It is important to understand how effective various parametrized protocols are as well as how robust they are to the effects of complex noise such as spatially correlated noise. First, we propose a family of parametrized encoding and decoding protocols called arbitrary-axis twist ansatzes, and show that it can lead to a substantial reduction in the number of one-axis twists needed to achieve a target estimation error. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the estimation error associated with these strategies decreases with system size in a faster manner than classical (or no-twist) protocols, even in the less-explored regimes where the prior information is limited. Last, using a polynomial-sized tensor network algorithm, we numerically analyze practical variational metrology beyond the symmetric subspace of a collective spin and find that quantum advantage persists for the arbitrary-axis twist ansatzes with a few one-axis twists and smaller total twisting angles for practically relevant noise levels. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
We consider a large class of Ramsey interferometry protocols which are enhanced by squeezing and un-squeezing operations before and after a phase signal is imprinted on the collective spin of N particles. We report an analytical optimization for any given particle number and strengths of (un-)squeezing. These results can be applied even when experimentally relevant decoherence processes during the squeezing and un-squeezing interactions are included. Noise between the two interactions is however not considered in this work. This provides a generalized characterization of squeezing echo protocols, recovering a number of known quantum metrological protocols as local sensitivity maxima, thereby proving their optimality. We discover a single new protocol. Its sensitivity enhancement relies on a double inversion of squeezing. In the general class of echo protocols, the newly found over-un-twisting protocol is singled out due to its Heisenberg scaling even at strong collective dephasing.