States for Phase Estimation

Weng-Long Chang, Athanasios V. Vasilakos

Su‐Yong Lee, Chang-Woo Lee, Hyunchul Nha +1 more

It was recently shown that an entangled coherent state, which is a superposition of two different coherent states, can surpass the performance of noon state in estimating an unknown phase shift. This may hint at further enhancement in phase estimation by incorporating more component states in the superposition of resource state. We here introduce a four-headed cat state (4HCS), a superposition of four different coherent states, and propose its application to quantum phase estimation. We demonstrate the enhanced performance in phase estimation by employing an entangled state via the 4HCS, which can surpass that of the two-headed cat state (2HCS), particularly in the regime of small average photon numbers. Moreover, we show that an entangled state modified from the 4HCS can further enhance the phase estimation, even in the regime of large average photon number under a photon-loss channel. Our investigation further extends to incorporate an increasingly large number of component states in the resource superposition state and clearly show its merit in phase estimation.

Sergei Kurgalin, Sergei Borzunov

Marco A. Rodríguez-García, F. E. Becerra

Phase estimation plays a central role in communications, sensing, and information processing. Quantum correlated states, such as squeezed states, enable phase estimation beyond the shot-noise limit, and in principle approach the ultimate quantum limit in precision, when paired with optimal quantum measurements. However, physical realizations of optimal quantum measurements for optical phase estimation with quantum-correlated states are still unknown. Here we address this problem by introducing an adaptive Gaussian measurement strategy for optical phase estimation with squeezed vacuum states that, by construction, approaches the quantum limit in precision. This strategy builds from a comprehensive set of locally optimal POVMs through rotations and homodyne measurements and uses the Adaptive Quantum State Estimation framework for optimizing the adaptive measurement process, which, under certain regularity conditions, guarantees asymptotic optimality for this quantum parameter estimation problem. As a result, the adaptive phase estimation strategy based on locally-optimal homodyne measurements achieves the quantum limit within the phase interval of [ 0 , π / 2 ) . Furthermore, we generalize this strategy by including heterodyne measurements, enabling phase estimation across the full range of phases from [ 0 , π ) , where squeezed vacuum allows for unambiguous phase encoding. Remarkably, for this phase interval, which is the maximum range of phases that can be encoded in squeezed vacuum, this estimation strategy maintains an asymptotic quantum-optimal performance, representing a significant advancement in quantum metrology.

Zhen-Dong Wei, Wei Han, Yingjie Zhang +3 more

Gravitational effects are inevitable as photons propagate in curved spacetime, and especially gravitational redshift can cause the distortion of photon wave packets, so it is very meaningful and necessary to study the controllable parameter estimation under the gravitational-redshift effect. Here, in correlated noisy channels under the effect of gravitational redshift, we analyze the precision of phase estimation of two-qubit system states which is introduced by a symplectic matrix for two-mode entangled states (two types of Werner-like states). We find that the gravitational redshift could decrease the precision of phase estimation of these two-qubit system states. Interestingly, by adjusting the correlation parameter of the channels and the initial entanglement, the precision of phase estimation in noisy channels under the influence of gravitational redshift could be enhanced. The larger the initial entanglement and the stronger the correlation of the channels, the higher the precision of phase estimation obtained. Particularly, for two types of Werner-like initial states, the phase estimation of the system is more robust for the Werner-like initial state $\mathrm{cos}(\frac{\ensuremath{\alpha}}{2})|01⟩+{e}^{i\ensuremath{\phi}}\mathrm{sin}(\frac{\ensuremath{\alpha}}{2})|10⟩$ as the strong enough gravitational-redshift effect.

Giacomo Mauro D’Ariano, Chiara Macchiavello, Matteo G. A. Paris