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Physical Review Letters

Cooperative Spin Amplifier for Enhanced Quantum Sensing

Minxiang Xu, Min Jiang, Yuanhong Wang, Haowen Su, Ying Huang, Xinhua Peng

Published Sep 26, 2024• 20 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum sensing is crucial for precision measurements, yet quantum sensor sensitivity is often limited by the coherence time of the quantum system. Here, we demonstrate a method to enhance coherence time through cooperative spins. Using a tunable feedback circuit, we induce cooperation among noble-gas ^{129}Xe spins, resulting in an impressive 18-fold coherence enhancement. Moreover, we show that the cooperative ^{129}Xe spins can significantly amplify magnetic signals by at least 3 orders of magnitude. Magnetic field sensing assisted with such a cooperative spin amplifier realizes the sensitivity of 4 fT/Hz^{1/2} and surpasses the spin-projection noise of the embedded ^{87}Rb spin gas magnetometer. These results pave the way for a new class of "cooperative quantum sensors," and open up exciting prospects in fundamental physics.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.133.133202

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Quantum sensing is crucial for precision measurements, yet quantum sensor sensitivity is often limited by the coherence time of the quantum system. Here, we demonstrate a method to enhance coherence time through cooperative spins. Using a tunable feedback circuit, we induce cooperation among noble-gas ^{129}Xe spins, resulting in an impressive 18-fold coherence enhancement. Moreover, we show that the cooperative ^{129}Xe spins can significantly amplify magnetic signals by at least 3 orders of magnitude. Magnetic field sensing assisted with such a cooperative spin amplifier realizes the sensitivity of 4 fT/Hz^{1/2} and surpasses the spin-projection noise of the embedded ^{87}Rb spin gas magnetometer. These results pave the way for a new class of "cooperative quantum sensors," and open up exciting prospects in fundamental physics.
Quantum amplification is recognized as a key resource for precision measurements. However, most conventional paradigms employ an ensemble of independent particles that usually limit the performance of quantum amplification in gain, spectral linewidth, etc. Here we demonstrate a new signal amplification using cooperative 129Xe nuclear spins embedded within a feedback circuit, where the noble-gas spin coherence time is enhanced by at least one order of magnitude. Using such a technique, magnetic field can be substantially pre-enhanced by more than three orders and is in situ readout with an embedded 87Rb magnetometer. We realize an ultrahigh magnetic sensitivity of 4.0 fT/Hz1/2^{1/2}1/2 that surpasses the photon-shot noise and even below the spin-projection noise of the embedded atomic magnetometer, allowing for exciting applications including searches for dark matter with sensitivity well beyond supernova constraints. Our findings extend the physics of quantum amplification to cooperative spin systems and can be generalized to a wide variety of existing sensors, enabling a new class of cooperative quantum sensors.
The use of atoms, molecules, and free electrons in quantum amplifiers has greatly advanced precision measurements, paving the way for the development of extremely-low-noise quantum devices such as masers and lasers. Here, we investigate the signal amplification of interacting spins and observe the amplification of magnetic fields using mixtures of interacting alkali-metal and noble gases. In contrast to noninteracting systems used as amplifiers, we demonstrate that interactions resulting from random atomic collisions give rise to two distinct amplification phenomena. These phenomena provide essential resources for enhancing quantum sensing capabilities. Our results show that magnetic fields can be amplified by at least two orders of magnitude, enhancing magnetic sensitivity to the femtotesla per root hertz level. Additionally, we report a counterpart phenomenon, deamplification, where the magnetic noise response is suppressed by at least one order of magnitude within certain frequency regimes. In this work alkali-metal and noble-gas spins are weakly coupled. We further explore how the performance of amplification changes with the interaction strength as the two spin gases gradually enter the strong-coupling regime, unveiling hitherto unexplored amplification effects that hold promise for enhancing precision measurements.
Quantum sensing utilizes the quantum resources of well-controlled quantum systems to measure small signals with high sensitivity, and has great potential in both fundamental science and concrete applications. Interacting quantum systems have attracted increasing interest in the field of precise measurements, owing to their potential to generate quantum-correlated states and exhibit rich many-body dynamics. These features provide a novel avenue for exploiting quantum resources in sensing applications. Although previous studies have shown that using such systems can improve sensitivity, they mainly focused on measuring individual physical quantities. In experiment, the challenge of using interacting quantum systems to achieve high-precision measurements of multiple physical parameters simultaneously has not been explored to a large extent. In this study, we demonstrate a first realisation of interaction-based multiparameter sensing by using strongly interacting nuclear spins under ultra-low magnetic field conditions. We find that, as the interaction strength among nuclear spins becomes significantly larger than their Larmor frequencies, a different regime emerges where the strongly interacting spins can be simultaneously sensitive to all components of a multidimensional field, such as a three-dimensional magnetic field. Moreover, we observe that the strong interactions between nuclear spins can increase their quantum coherence times to as long as several seconds, thereby improving measurement precision. Our sensor successfully achieves precision measurement of three-dimensional vector magnetic fields with a field sensitivity reaching the order of 10–11 T and an angular resolution as high as 0.2 rad. Importantly, this approach eliminates the need for external reference fields, thereby avoiding calibration errors and technical noise commonly encountered in traditional magnetometry. Experimentally optimized protocol further enhances the sensitivity of the interacting spin-based sensor by up to five orders of magnitude compared with non-interacting or classical schemes. These results demonstrate the enormous potential of interacting spin systems as a powerful platform for high-precision multi-parameter quantum sensing. The techniques developed here pave the way for a new generation of quantum sensors that use intrinsic spin interactions to exceed the traditional sensitivity limits, presenting a promising route toward ultra-sensitive, calibration-free magnetometry in complex environments.
We report an ultrasensitive atomic spin sensor employing double spin resonance, achieving a spin signal enhancement of 2600 and a sensitivity of 0.57 fT/sqrt[Hz] under nonzero magnetic field measurements. Furthermore, we establish an in situ alkali-noble-gas spin sensor by tracing the measured spin precession frequency to the nuclear spins gyromagnetic ratio constant with high accuracy. The dominant systematic uncertainty induced by Fermi-contact interactions during the trace process has been suppressed by more than 2 orders of magnitude via pulsed train sequences. This Letter paves the way for achieving both ultrahigh sensitivity and traceability, offering promising opportunities for exploring new physics beyond the standard model and advancing quantum metrology in complex environments.
Quantum amplification enables the enhancement of weak signals and is of great importance for precision measurements, such as biomedical science and tests of fundamental symmetries. Here, we observe a previously unexplored magnetic amplification using dark noble-gas nuclear spins in the absence of pump light. Such dark spins exhibit remarkable coherence lasting up to 6 min and the resilience against the perturbations caused by overlapping alkali-metal gas. We demonstrate that the observed phenomenon, referred to as "dark spin amplification," significantly magnifies magnetic field signals by at least three orders of magnitude. As an immediate application, we showcase an ultrasensitive magnetometer capable of measuring subfemtotesla fields in a single 500-s measurement. Our approach is generic and can be applied to a wide range of noble-gas isotopes, and we discuss promising optimizations that could further improve the current signal amplification up to [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text]Ne, [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text]Xe, and [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text]He. This work unlocks opportunities in precision measurements, including searches for ultralight dark matter with sensitivity well beyond the supernova-observation constraints.
The sensitivity of quantum sensors is fundamentally constrained by the standard quantum limit (SQL) arising from intrinsic quantum fluctuations. While non-classical resources like squeezing or entanglement can surpass this limit, their utility is often restricted by the extreme fragility of entangled states and the complexity of their preparation. Quantum criticality offers a compelling alternative by harnessing divergent susceptibility to amplify signals without requiring fragile non-classical resources. However, the practical benefit of this approach has remained controversial due to the potential for the simultaneous amplification of quantum noise. Here, we demonstrate a universal protocol for noiseless critical sensing by engineering a light-driven atomic ensemble near a dynamical critical point. Analogous to a Kapitza pendulum near its inverted orientation, the spin system enters a non-equilibrium regime where the signal susceptibility diverges while the quantum noise periodically recedes to its coherent baseline. We exploit this ``noise ebbing'' to create a built-in noiseless amplifier, demonstrating a 3.3 dB metrological gain over the SQL in an atomic magnetometer. Our implementation exhibits intrinsic robustness against common experimental imperfections such as detection losses, establishing non-equilibrium critical dynamics as a practical and versatile paradigm for surpassing the fundamental limits of quantum sensing.