Achieving sub-shot-noise sensing at finite temperatures

We investigate sensing of magnetic fields using quantum spin chains at finite temperature and exploit quantum phase crossovers to improve metrological bounds on the estimation of the chain parameters. In particular, we analyze the XX spin chain and show that the magnetic sensitivity of this system i...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Mehboudi, Mohammad, Correa, Luis A., Sanpera, Anna
Format: Article
Published: American Physical Society 2016
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/46867/
Description
Summary:We investigate sensing of magnetic fields using quantum spin chains at finite temperature and exploit quantum phase crossovers to improve metrological bounds on the estimation of the chain parameters. In particular, we analyze the XX spin chain and show that the magnetic sensitivity of this system is dictated by its adiabatic magnetic susceptibility, which scales extensively (linearly) in the number of spins N. Next, we introduce an iterative feedforward protocol that actively exploits features of quantum phase crossovers to enable super-extensive scaling of the magnetic sensitivity. Moreover, we provide experimentally realistic observables to saturate the quantum metrological bounds. Finally, we also address magnetic sensing in the Heisenberg XY spin chain.