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Quantum metrology enhances the sensitivity of parameter estimation using the distinctive resources of quantum mechanics such as entanglement. It has been shown that the precision of estimating an overall multiplicative factor of a Hamiltonian can be increased to exceed the classical limit, yet little is known about estimating a general Hamiltonian parameter. In this paper, we study this problem in detail. We find that the scaling of the estimation precision with the number of systems can always be optimized to the Heisenberg limit, while the time scaling can be quite different from that of estimating an overall multiplicative factor. We derive the generator of local parameter translation on the unitary evolution operator of the Hamiltonian, and use it to evaluate the estimation precision of the parameter and establish a general upper bound on the quantum Fisher information. The results indicate that the quantum Fisher information generally can be divided into two parts: one is quadratic in time, while the other oscillates with time. When the eigenvalues of the Hamiltonian do not depend on the parameter, the quadratic term vanishes, and the quantum Fisher information will be bounded in this case. To illustrate the results, we give an example of estimating a parameter of a magnetic field by measuring a spin-1/2 particle and compare the results for estimating the amplitude and the direction of the magnetic field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postselected weak measurement has been widely used in experiments to observe weak effects in various physical systems. However, it is still unclear how large the amplification ability of a weak measurement can be and what determines the limit of this ability, which is fundamental to understanding and applying weak measurements. The limitation of the conventional weak-value formalism for this problem is the divergence of weak values when the pre- and postselections are nearly orthogonal. In this paper, we study this problem by a variational approach for a general Hamiltonian Hint = g A ⊗ Ωδ(t - t0), g « 1. We derive a general asymptotic solution and show that the amplification limit is essentially independent of g and is determined by only the initial state of the detector and the number of distinct eigenvalues of A or Ω. An example of spin-1/2 particles with a pair of Stern-Gerlach devices is given to illustrate the results. The limiting case of continuous-variable systems is also investigated to demonstrate the influence of system dimension on the amplification limit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Weak measurement is a novel quantum measurement scheme, which is usually characterized by the weak value formalism. To guarantee the validity of the weak value formalism, the fidelity between the preselection and the postselection should not be too small generally. In this work, we study the weak measurement on a qubit system with exactly or asymptotically orthogonal pre- and postselections. We shall establish a general rigorous framework for the weak measurement beyond the weak value formalism, and obtain the average output of a weak measurement when the pre- and postselections are exactly orthogonal. We shall also study the asymptotic behavior of a weak measurement in the limiting process that the pre- and postselections tend to be orthogonal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we reveal a type of impossibility discovered in our recent research which forbids comparing the closeness of multiple unknown quantum states with any nontrivial threshold in a perfect or unambiguous way. This impossibility is distinct from the existing impossibilities in that it is a "collective" impossibility on multiple quantum states; most other "no-go" theorems are concerned with only one single state each time, i.e., it is an impossibility on a nonlocal quantum operation. This impossibility may provide new insight into the nature of quantum mechanics, and it implies more limitations on quantum information tasks than the existing no-go theorems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the fundamental limits in precision allowed by quantum mechanics from Landau-Zener transitions, concerning Hamiltonian parameters. While the Landau-Zener transition probabilities depend sensitively on the system parameters, much more precision may be obtained using the acquired phase, quantified by the quantum Fisher information. This information scales with a power of the elapsed time for the quantum case, whereas it is time independent if the transition probabilities alone are used. We add coherent control to the system and increase the permitted maximum precision in this time-dependent quantum system. The case of multiple passes before measurement, Landau-Zener-Stueckelberg interferometry, is considered, and we demonstrate that proper quantum control can cause the quantum Fisher information about the oscillation frequency to scale as T4, where T is the elapsed time. These results are foundational for frequency standards and quantum clocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we consider the systematic error of quantum metrology by weak measurements under decoherence. We derive the systematic error of maximum likelihood estimation in general to the first-order approximation of a small deviation in the probability distribution and study the robustness of standard weak measurement and postselected weak measurements against systematic errors. We show that, with a large weak value, the systematic error of a postselected weak measurement when the probe undergoes decoherence can be significantly lower than that of a standard weak measurement. This indicates another advantage of weak-value amplification in improving the performance of parameter estimation. We illustrate the results by an exact numerical simulation of decoherence arising from a bosonic mode and compare it to the first-order analytical result we obtain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose and examine the use of biphoton pairs, such as those created in parametric down-conversion or four-wave mixing, to enhance the precision and the resolution of measuring optical displacements by position-sensitive detection. We show that the precision of measuring a small optical beam displacement with this method can be significantly enhanced by the correlation between the two photons, given the same optical mode. The improvement is largest if the correlations between the photons are strong, and falls off as the biphoton correlation weakens. More surprisingly, we find that the smallest resolvable parameter of a simple split detector scales as the inverse of the number of biphotons for small biphoton number ("Heisenberg scaling"), because the Fisher information diverges as the parameter to be estimated decreases in value. One usually sees this scaling only for systems with many entangled degrees of freedom. We discuss the transition for the split-detection scheme to the standard quantum limit scaling for imperfect correlations as the biphoton number is increased. An analysis of an N-pixel detector is also given to investigate the benefit of using a higher resolution detector. The physical limit of these metrology schemes is determined by the uncertainty in the birth zone of the biphoton in the nonlinear crystal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study quantum measurement with preselection and postselection, and derive the precise expressions of the measurement results without any restriction on the coupling strength between the system and the measuring device. For a qubit system, we derive the maximum pointer shifts by choosing appropriate initial and finial states. A significant amplification effect is obtained when the interaction between the system and the measuring device is very weak, and typical ideal quantum measurement results are obtained when the interaction is strong. The improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the enhancement of the measurement sensitivity (MS) by weak measurements are studied. Without considering the probability decrease due to postselection, the SNR and the MS can be both significantly improved by weak measurements; however, neither SNR nor MS can be effectively improved when the probability decrease is considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]