Nonlinear Enhancement of Measurement Precision via a Hybrid Quantum Switch

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a photonic quantum setup that achieves nonlinear measurement precision scaling beyond classical limits by manipulating probe dynamics through a hybrid quantum switch, without photon interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hybrid quantum switch in photonic systems that enables nonlinear scaling of measurement precision with resource efficiency.

Findings

Achieved a practical enhancement factor of up to 2317.

Measured rotation angle with a normalized precision of approximately 10^{-4} rad per photon.

Demonstrated nonlinear scaling of measurement precision without photon interactions.

Abstract

Quantum metrology promises measurement precision beyond the classical limit by using suitably tailored quantum states and detection strategies. However, scaling up this advantage is experimentally challenging, due to the difficulty of generating high-quality large-scale probes. Here, we build a photonic setup that achieves enhanced precision scaling by manipulating the probe's dynamics through operations performed in a coherently controlled order. Our setup applies an unknown rotation and a known orbital angular momentum increase in a coherently controlled order, in a way that reproduces a hybrid quantum SWITCH involving gates generated by both discrete and continuous variables. The unknown rotation angle $\theta$ is measured with precision scaling as $1/4ml$ when a photon undergoes a rotation of $2m\theta$ and an angular momentum shift of $2l \hbar$. With a practical enhancement factor as high as 2317, the ultimate precision in our experiment is $0.0105^{\prime \prime}$ when using $7.16\times10^7$ photons, corresponding to a normalized precision of $\approx 10^{-4}$rad per photon. No photon interaction occurs in our experiment, and the precision enhancement consumes only a linearly increasing amount of physical resources while achieving a nonlinear scaling of the precision. We further indicate that this nonlinear enhancement roots in an in-depth exploration of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle (HUP), and our findings not only deepen the understanding of the HUP but also pave a pathway for advancements in quantum metrology.