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arXiv:2603.23804

Precision bounds for frequency estimation under collective dephasing and open-loop control

Francisco Riberi, Gerardo Paz-Silva, Lorenza Viola

quant-phSubmitted Mar 25, 2026• Announced Mar 26, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Dephasing noise is a ubiquitous source of decoherence in current atomic sensors. We address the problem of entanglement-assisted frequency estimation subject to classical dephasing noise with full spatial correlations (collective) and arbitrary temporal correlations. Our contributions are threefold. (i) We derive rigorous, state-independent bounds on the achievable estimation precision, showing how they are entirely determined by the short-time behavior of the decoherence function. For temporally uncorrelated (Markovian) dephasing, precision is limited by a probe-independent constant. For temporally correlated stationary noise, the bound approaches the noiseless limit for classical states, precluding any asymptotic quantum advantage. (ii) We show that these scaling bounds are tight, by constructing generalized Ramsey protocols that saturate them. These optimal protocols use squeezing at the input and before readout, both of which are available in state-of-the-art atomic interferometers. Implementing a perfect-echo protocol, which reaches Heisenberg scaling in the absence of noise, remains optimal in this noisy setting, irrespective of the noise temporal correlations. (iii) We prove that arbitrary collective open-loop control cannot lift the no-go for super-classical precision scaling under either Markovian or colored stationary noise, highlighting the detrimental nature of full spatial correlations. In the latter case, temporal correlations may nonetheless enable constant-factor improvements over the standard quantum limit, which may still be important in practical metrological scenarios.

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Dephasing noise is a ubiquitous source of decoherence in current atomic sensors. We address the problem of entanglement-assisted frequency estimation subject to classical dephasing noise with full spatial correlations (collective) and arbitrary temporal correlations. Our contributions are threefold. (i) We derive rigorous, state-independent bounds on the achievable estimation precision, showing how they are entirely determined by the short-time behavior of the decoherence function. For temporally uncorrelated (Markovian) dephasing, precision is limited by a probe-independent constant. For temporally correlated stationary noise, the bound approaches the noiseless limit for classical states, precluding any asymptotic quantum advantage. (ii) We show that these scaling bounds are tight, by constructing generalized Ramsey protocols that saturate them. These optimal protocols use squeezing at the input and before readout, both of which are available in state-of-the-art atomic interferometers. Implementing a perfect-echo protocol, which reaches Heisenberg scaling in the absence of noise, remains optimal in this noisy setting, irrespective of the noise temporal correlations. (iii) We prove that arbitrary collective open-loop control cannot lift the no-go for super-classical precision scaling under either Markovian or colored stationary noise, highlighting the detrimental nature of full spatial correlations. In the latter case, temporal correlations may nonetheless enable constant-factor improvements over the standard quantum limit, which may still be important in practical metrological scenarios.
Interactions among sensors can provide, in addition to entanglement, an important resource for boosting the precision in quantum estimation protocols. Dephasing noise, however, remains a leading source of decoherence in state-of-the-art quantum sensing platforms. We analyze the impact of classical collective dephasing with arbitrary temporal correlations on the performance of generalized Ramsey interferometry protocols with quadratic encoding of a target frequency parameter. The optimal asymptotic precision bounds are derived for both product coherent spin states and a class of experimentally relevant entangled spin-squeezed states of N qubit sensors. While, as in linear metrology, entanglement offers no advantage if the noise is Markovian, a precision scaling of N−1 is reachable with classical input states in the quadratic setting, which is improved to N−5/4 when temporal correlations are present and the Zeno regime is accessible. The use of nonclassical spin-squeezed states and a nonlinear readout further allows for an N−3/2 precision scaling, which we prove is asymptotically optimal. We also show how to counter noise-induced bias by introducing a simple ratio estimator, which relies on detecting two suitable system observables, and we show that it remains asymptotically unbiased in the presence of dephasing, without detriment to the achievable precision.
Abstract We study the estimation precision attainable by entanglement-enhanced Ramsey interferometry in the presence of spatiotemporally correlated non-classical noise. Our analysis relies on an exact expression of the reduced density matrix of the qubit probes under general zero-mean Gaussian stationary dephasing, which is established through cumulant-expansion techniques and may be of independent interest in the context of non-Markovian open dynamics. By continuing and expanding our previous work (Beaudoin et al 2018 Phys. Rev. A 98 020102(R)), we analyze the effects of a non-collective coupling regime between the qubit probes and their environment, focusing on two limiting scenarios where the couplings may take only two or a continuum of possible values. In the paradigmatic case of spin–boson dephasing noise from a thermal environment, we find that it is in principle possible to suppress, on average, the effect of spatial correlations by randomizing the location of the probes, as long as enough configurations are sampled where noise correlations are negative. As a result, superclassical precision scaling is asymptotically restored for initial entangled states, including experimentally accessible one-axis spin-squeezed states.
Entanglement has been proposed as a means to improve the sensitivity of sensing weak signals. While the degree of this quantum advantage is well understood in noiseless settings, the situation is more complex under realistic conditions, where the system is subject to decoherence. In this case, the enhancement depends on the specific noise characteristics. Previous treatments of colored noise typically assume that the noise is uncorrelated between successive experiments. Here, we consider the scenario in which the noise exhibits correlations across multiple shots. We derive a simple fundamental limit to the sensitivity based on the fact that the sensitivity cannot be better than the signal-to-noise ratio seen by the probe. Focusing on Ramsey spectroscopy with probes affected by pure classical dephasing, we show that, for suitable spatial and temporal noise correlations, entangled probes achieve a better scaling of the sensitivity with the number of probes than separable states. This demonstrates that entanglement can provide a substantial improvement for Ramsey spectroscopy subject to correlated noise.
We derive fundamental bounds for general quantum metrological models involving both temporal or spatial correlations (mathematically described by quantum combs), which may be effectively computed in the limit of a large number of probes or sensing channels involved. Although the bounds are not guaranteed to be tight in general, their tightness may be systematically increased by increasing the numerical complexity of the procedure. Interestingly, this approach yields bounds tighter than the state of the art also for uncorrelated channels. We apply the bounds to study the limits for the most general adaptive phase estimation models in the presence of temporally correlated dephasing. We consider dephasing both parallel (no Heisenberg scaling) and perpendicular (Heisenberg scaling possible) to the signal. In the former case our new bounds show that negative correlations are beneficial; for the latter we show evidence that the bounds are tight. We also apply the bounds to collisional thermometry, i.e., estimation of a parameter of the environment, showing evidence that entangled probes may provide only a limited advantage.
We derive ultimate precision bounds for estimating parameters encoded in \emph{time-dependent} Hamiltonians in the presence of general Markovian noise, allowing for arbitrary adaptive protocols with fast controls and noiseless ancillas. Extending the minimization-over-purifications framework to time-varying continuous channels, we obtain a differential upper bound on the achievable quantum Fisher information (QFI) that can be evaluated at all times via semidefinite programming. For parameter-independent noise, we prove a universal long-time scaling law: if the coherent (noiseless) dynamics yields Qcoh(T)∼T2kQ_{\mathrm{coh}}(T)\sim T^{2k}Qcoh​(T)∼T2k, then under Markovian noise the QFI scales at most as Q(T)∼T2kQ(T)\sim T^{2k}Q(T)∼T2k in the DHNLS regime, whereas in the DHLS regime it is fundamentally limited to Q(T)∼T2k−1Q(T)\sim T^{2k-1}Q(T)∼T2k−1. We illustrate these behaviors on paradigmatic driven-qubit sensors, exhibiting T4T^{4}T4 and T3T^{3}T3 scalings under dephasing and spontaneous emission, respectively. Finally, we provide explicit continuous exact and approximate quantum error correction constructions -- supplemented by spin-squeezed probes -- that asymptotically saturate the bounds, establishing their tightness.
Spin-squeezed states enable entanglement-enhanced frequency estimation; however, the achievable performance is limited in practice by decoherence. We study the problem of parameter estimation under \emph{classical collective noise} that acts along a \emph{fixed} direction during signal encoding. While we restrict our analysis to Gaussian noise statistics, no assumption is made on the nature of the noise temporal correlations. Our approach captures both parallel (dephasing) and single-axis transverse noise as special cases, and covers both Markovian and non-Markovian metrological regimes. In the properly squeezed limit, where a Holstein-Primakoff description is accurate, we identify a geometric noise-immunity mechanism: for \emph{known} non-parallel signal and noise axes, an appropriate one-axis-twisted input encodes the signal in a quadrature that is metric-orthogonal to the direction of noise-induced diffusion. Irrespective of the noise temporal correlations, the resulting estimation precision exhibits Heisenberg scaling in the probe number. Optimal performance is achievable by measuring a single collective spin component. Imperfect knowledge of the noise axis produces a crossover from Heisenberg scaling at moderate probe number back to the known collective-dephasing bounds asymptotically.