arXiv subjects

Tyler G. Thurtell

Publications and source records attributed to Tyler G. Thurtell.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Heisenberg-limited metrology in the presence of non-Markovian noise with finite control rates

Recently, it has been shown that protocols utilizing infinitely fast controls, such as quantum error correction, can in principle restore Heisenberg-limited frequency estimation in the presence of a broad class of non-Markovian noise models arising from coupling to finite-dimensional environments. However, these controls differ substantially from those used to address Markovian noise, and their underlying physical mechanism remains unclear. In this work, we establish a direct connection between these protocols and the quantum Zeno effect, and extend the framework to infinite-dimensional environments. We delineate three types of constructions: (a) protocols that rely solely on measurements, (b) protocols using an active recovery after measurements and (c) protocols using dynamical decoupling and rigorously analyze the performance of each when controls can be applied at only a finite rate. While protocols relying purely on measurements can be engineered for noise models where active recoveries are fundamentally impossible, they result in the quantum Fisher information exhibiting a quadratically worse dependence on the control frequency. Surprisingly, while dynamical decoupling protocols are possible whenever protocols relying only on measurements can be engineered, the quantum Fisher information has the same dependence on control frequency as the active recovery protocols. Numerical simulations suggest that the improvement offered by dynamical decoupling may work in regimes beyond the perturbative setting where our rigorous theorems apply.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2026

Adaptive quantum metrology with large dynamic range using short one-axis twists

Phase estimation with potentially large phase values, i.e., with large dynamic range, has many applications in quantum metrology, for example to atomic clocks. A recently proposed phase estimation scheme approaches the Heisenberg scaling in this global setting using sequences of increasingly squeezed Gaussian states as probes and adaptively chosen, potentially mid-circuit, measurements. In this work, we first observe that the pattern of increase in the squeezing of the probes is applicable even to states with some non-Gaussian features. We then propose an experimentally feasible version of this phase estimation scheme, based on the alternating application of one-axis twist (OAT) operations and rotations. Our protocols are explicitly described in terms of multiple OAT angles whose durations decrease polynomially with system size and spin-squeezing parameters that decay as $N^{-μ}$, with $μ>2/3$ in most cases. Using numerical computation of the system-size dependence $N^{-ν}$ of the Bayesian mean-squared error of an estimator, we show that these states are suitable for use in the phase estimation scheme, and highlight the protocols to achieve $ν=17/9$ and $53/27$ using two and three OAT operations respectively in the last adaptation stage. We also analyze the limited non-Gaussianity of the resulting probe states and discuss the role of non-Gaussianity in this protocol more generally. Finally, we analyze how robust these protocols are with respect to imperfections such as particle number fluctuations and coherent control fluctuations.

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arXiv2024

Optimizing one-axis twists for variational Bayesian quantum metrology

Quantum metrology and sensing seek advantage in estimating an unknown parameter of some quantum state or channel, using entanglement such as spin squeezing produced by one-axis twists or other quantum resources. In particular, qubit phase estimation, or rotation sensing, appears as a ubiquitous problem with applications to electric field sensing, magnetometry, atomic clocks, and gyroscopes. By adopting the Bayesian formalism to the phase estimation problem to account for limited initial knowledge about the value of the phase, we formulate variational metrology and treat the state preparation (or encoding) and measurement (or decoding) procedures as parameterized quantum circuits. It is important to understand how effective various parametrized protocols are as well as how robust they are to the effects of complex noise such as spatially correlated noise. First, we propose a new family of parametrized encoding and decoding protocols called arbitrary-axis twist ansatzes, and show that it can lead to a substantial reduction in the number of one-axis twists needed to achieve a target estimation error. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the estimation error associated with these strategies decreases with system size in a faster manner than classical (or no-twists) protocols, even in the less-explored regimes where the prior information is limited. Last, using a polynomial-size tensor network algorithm, we numerically analyze practical variational metrology beyond the symmetric subspace of a collective spin, and find that quantum advantage persists for the arbitrary-axis twist ansatzes with a few one-axis twists and smaller total twisting angles for practically relevant noise levels.

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arXiv2022

Quantum computational advantage attested by nonlocal games with the cyclic cluster state

We propose a set of Bell-type nonlocal games that can be used to prove an unconditional quantum advantage in an objective and hardware-agnostic manner. In these games, the circuit depth needed to prepare a cyclic cluster state and measure a subset of its Pauli stabilizers on a quantum computer is compared to that of classical Boolean circuits with the same, nearest-neighboring gate connectivity. Using a circuit-based trapped-ion quantum computer, we prepare and measure a six-qubit cyclic cluster state with an overall fidelity of 60.6% and 66.4%, before and after correcting for measurement-readout errors, respectively. Our experimental results indicate that while this fidelity readily passes conventional (or depth-0) Bell bounds for local hidden-variable models, it is on the cusp of demonstrating a higher probability of success than what is possible by depth-1 classical circuits. Our games offer a practical and scalable set of quantitative benchmarks for quantum computers in the pre-fault-tolerant regime as the number of qubits available increases.

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