Heisenberg-limited metrology with information recycling

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that information recycling enables Heisenberg-limited phase measurements in atom interferometers using partially transferred number-correlated quantum states, regardless of transfer efficiency or coherence loss.

Contribution

It shows that Heisenberg-limited metrology is achievable with partial quantum state transfer and general quantum-state-transfer processes using information recycling.

Findings

Heisenberg-limited phase measurement achieved with partial state transfer.

Performance is robust against loss and coherence degradation.

Applicable to atom and optical interferometry with quantum state transfer.

Abstract

Information recycling has been shown to improve the sensitivity of atom interferometers by exploiting atom-light entanglement. In this paper, we apply information recycling to an interferometer where the input quantum state has been partially transferred from some donor system. We demonstrate that when the quantum state of this donor system is from a particular class of number-correlated Heisenberg-limited states, information recycling yields a Heisenberg-limited phase measurement. Crucially, this result holds irrespective of the fraction of the quantum state transferred to the interferometer input and also for a general class of number-conserving quantum-state-transfer processes, including ones that destroy the first-order phase coherence between the branches of the interferometer. This result could have significant applications in Heisenberg-limited atom interferometry, where the quantum state is transferred from a Heisenberg-limited photon source, and in optical interferometry where the loss can be monitored.