Limitations of the dissipative quantum Fisher information in Liouville space
Tatiana Iakovleva, Ruvi Lecamwasam, Jason Twamley
Open quantum system dynamics traditionally described by a quantum master equation can be effectively reformulated in the Liouville space of vectorised density matrices. Despite an extensive use of the Liouville space framework to describe quantum states evolution, its application to quantum metrology is not well explored. Several papers have studied a Liouville-space generalisation of the quantum Fisher information, called the dissipative quantum Fisher information (DQFI). We perform a comparative study between the quantum Fisher information (QFI) in Hilbert space and DQFI, deriving an explicit relation between the two quantities for qubit, qudit, and harmonic oscillator systems. The derived relations are nontrivial, and depend on the state's purity. We show that for a single qubit, the QFI can be efficiently recovered from the DQFI via a simple mapping, while in higher dimensions the expression becomes convoluted and does not convert to a compact form. We find examples where the DQFI is neither an upper nor lower bound for the Hilbert space QFI, and suggest that the informational content of the DQFI itself cannot be straightforwardly interpreted. Our results clarify the limitations of the Liouville space based approach and structural differences with the QFI in the context of quantum parameter estimation problem.
Scientific Reports•Jun 22, 2026•0 citations