Supersensitive measurement using single-atom control of an atomic ensemble

TL;DR

This paper proposes a quantum sensor using atom interferometry with a single control atom and an atomic ensemble, achieving enhanced measurement sensitivity through quantum correlations in mixed states.

Contribution

It introduces a novel quantum metrology scheme leveraging Rydberg interactions for supra-classical sensitivity with large, impure quantum states.

Findings

Potential for precision scaling with ensemble size

Demonstration of quantum-enhanced measurement sensitivity

Transition from classical to quantum-enhanced sensitivity in mixed states

Abstract

We analyze the operation of a novel sensor based on atom interferometry, which can achieve supra-classical sensitivity by exploiting quantum correlations in mixed states of many qubits. The interferometer is based on quantum gates which use coherently-controlled Rydberg interactions between a single atom (which acts as a control qubit) and an atomic ensemble (which provides register qubits). In principle, our scheme can achieve precision scaling with the size of the ensemble - which can extend to large numbers of atoms - while using only single-qubit operations on the control and bulk operations on the ensemble. We investigate realistic implementation of the interferometer, and our main aim is to develop a new approach to quantum metrology that can achieve quantum-enhanced measurement precision by exploiting coherent operations on large impure quantum states. We propose an experiment to demonstrate the enhanced sensitivity of the protocol, and to investigate a transition from classical to supra-classical sensitivity which occurs when using highly-mixed probe states.