On the power of moving quantum sensors: fully flexible and noise-resilient sensing

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a single moving quantum sensor can fully access spatially correlated fields, selectively measure linear functionals, and surpass static sensor limits in noise resilience and information scaling.

Contribution

It introduces the concept that moving quantum sensors can outperform fixed sensors in noise suppression and information scaling, offering new capabilities for quantum sensing.

Findings

Single moving quantum sensor accesses all spatial correlations.

Moving sensors can eliminate all noise signals with orthogonal spatial correlation.

Improved quantum Fisher information scaling beyond static limits.

Abstract

We show that a single moving quantum sensor provides complete access to spatially correlated scalar fields. We demonstrate that with either trajectory or internal state control, one can selectively measure any linear functional, e.g. a gradient or a spatial Fourier series coefficient, while successfully eliminating {\it all} noise signals with orthogonal spatial correlation. This even exceeds the capabilities of a sensor network consisting of multiple entangled, yet spatially fixed, quantum sensors, where the number of suppressed noise signals is limited by the number of sensor positions. We show that one can achieve an improved scaling of the quantum Fisher information for moving sensors beyond the static fundamental limit of $T^2$.