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Physical Review A

Uncertainty control and precision enhancement of weak measurements in the quadratic regime

Bertúlio de Lima Bernardo, Weliton Soares Martins, Sérgio Azevedo, Alexandre Rosas

Published Jul 13, 2015• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Weak-value amplification has been successfully used to amplify the sensitivity of small detector signals, which paved the way towards new developments for precise parameter estimation methods. In general, the scheme is based on the idea that, between pre- and postselection, the measured system and the pointer are coupled in such a way that the interaction depends linearly on the coupling constant, the so-called linear regime. In this article, we propose an improvement to this technique that is based on the quadratic regime of interaction to increase the precision of such measurements. We demonstrate that by employing a purely real (imaginary) weak value in this regime, it is possible to decrease considerably the standard deviation of the final pointer observable in the position (momentum) space, when compared to the traditional linear regime, rendering a precision enhancement. By using an all-optical implementation, we obtained experimental data that confirm our theoretical predictions.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.92.012109

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Weak-value amplification has been successfully used to amplify the sensitivity of small detector signals, which paved the way towards new developments for precise parameter estimation methods. In general, the scheme is based on the idea that, between pre- and postselection, the measured system and the pointer are coupled in such a way that the interaction depends linearly on the coupling constant, the so-called linear regime. In this article, we propose an improvement to this technique that is based on the quadratic regime of interaction to increase the precision of such measurements. We demonstrate that by employing a purely real (imaginary) weak value in this regime, it is possible to decrease considerably the standard deviation of the final pointer observable in the position (momentum) space, when compared to the traditional linear regime, rendering a precision enhancement. By using an all-optical implementation, we obtained experimental data that confirm our theoretical predictions.
The weak-value amplification is extensively considered in precision metrology in order to achieve a higher sensitivity. Despite the practical benefits in amplifying small physical quantities, its metrological advantage still arouses a broad debate due to the low postselection probability of success. In this paper, by employing the quantum Fisher information metric, we show that the precision of estimating an unknown parameter can be improved by introducing a precoupling process with properly chosen interaction operators. We point out this result is credible for both real and imaginary weak values. By tracking the meter wave functions, we find this enhancement of estimation precision comes from a precoupling induced modulation of the meter wave function, thus the most sensitive regime with respect to the parameter is reached. In addition, the estimation error is investigated by considering the difference between the theoretical and estimated value. The analysis suggests that this kind of error can be effectively suppressed by averaging the estimations resulted from different initial meter states. These results are finally illustrated by an exact numerical simulation where the advantages of our proposal are displayed by the comparison to the standard weak-value amplification scheme.
Since weak measurements are known to produce measurement values that can be much larger than the maximal eigenvalues of the measured observable, it is an interesting question how this enhancement of the measurement signal relates to the sensitivity of quantum measurements as investigated in the field of quantum metrology. In this presentation, it is pointed out that the estimation of a small interaction parameter using weak measurements actually corresponds to standard quantum metrology, where the logarithmic derivatives of the final measurement probabilities are proportional to the corresponding weak values. The analysis of the general weak measurement formalism then shows that extreme weak values do not improve the sensitivity. Instead, all final measurements with real weak values have the same sensitivity as a final measurement of the eigenvalues. This result supports the view that real weak values can be interpreted as precise, zero uncertainty estimates of a quantum observable, despite their deviation from the eigenvalues of the corresponding operator.
The achievable precision of parameter estimation plays a significant role in evaluating a strategy of metrology. In practice, one may employ approximations in a theoretical model development for simplicity, which, however, will cause systematic error and lead to a loss of precision. We derive the error of maximum likelihood estimation in the weak-value amplification technique where the linear approximation of the coupling parameter is used. We show that this error is positively related to the coupling strength and can be effectively suppressed by improving the Fisher information. Considering the roles played by weak values and initial meter states in the weak-value amplification, we also point out that the estimation error can be decreased by several orders of magnitude by averaging the estimations resulted from different initial meter states or weak values. These results are finally illustrated in a numerical example where an extended linear response regime to the parameter is observed.
Large weak values have been used to amplify the sensitivity of a linear response signal for detecting changes in a small parameter, which has also enabled a simple method for precise parameter estimation. However, producing a large weak value requires a low postselection probability for an ancilla degree of freedom, which limits the utility of the technique. We propose an improvement to this method that uses entanglement to increase the efficiency. We show that by entangling and postselecting n ancillas, the postselection probability can be increased by a factor of n while keeping the weak value fixed (compared to n uncorrelated attempts with one ancilla), which is the optimal scaling with n that is expected from quantum metrology. Furthermore, we show the surprising result that the quantum Fisher information about the detected parameter can be almost entirely preserved in the postselected state, which allows the sensitive estimation to approximately saturate the relevant quantum Cramér-Rao bound. To illustrate this protocol we provide simple quantum circuits that can be implemented using current experimental realizations of three entangled qubits.
We present a parameter estimation technique based on performing joint measurements of a weak interaction away from the weak-value-amplification approximation. Two detectors are used to collect full statistics of the correlations between two weakly entangled degrees of freedom. Without discarding of data, the protocol resembles the anomalous amplification of an imaginary-weak-value-like response. The amplification is induced in the difference signal of both detectors allowing robustness to different sources of technical noise, and offering in addition the advantages of balanced signals for precision metrology. All of the Fisher information about the parameter of interest is collected. A tunable phase controls the strength of the amplification response. We experimentally demonstrate the proposed technique by measuring polarization rotations in a linearly polarized laser pulse. We show that in the presence of technical noise the effective sensitivity and precision of a split detector is increased when compared to a conventional continuous-wave balanced detection technique.
By choosing more orthogonality between preselection and postselection states, one can significantly improve the sensitivity in general optical quantum metrology based on the weak-value amplification (WVA) approach. However, increasing the orthogonality decreases the probability of detecting photons and makes the weak measurement difficult, especially when the weak measurement is disturbed by strong noise and the pointer is drowned in noise with a negative-decibel signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In this article we introduce and numerically evaluate a modified weak-measurement protocol with a temporal pointer, namely, the autocorrelative weak-value amplification (AWVA) approach. Specifically, a small longitudinal time delay (tiny phase shift) $\ensuremath{\tau}$ of a Gaussian pulse is measured by implementing two simultaneous autocorrelative weak measurements under Gaussian white noise with different SNRs. The small quantities $\ensuremath{\tau}$ are obtained by measuring the autocorrelation coefficient of the pulses instead of fitting the shift of the mean value of the probe in the standard WVA technique. Simulation results show that the AWVA approach outperforms the standard WVA technique in the time domain with smaller statistical errors, remarkably increasing the precision of weak measurement under a strong noise background.