Complementarity between bosonic and fermionic many-body interferences with partially distinguishable particles

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the fundamental complementarity between bosonic and fermionic interference persists even with partial particle distinguishability, impacting quantum metrology and relating mathematical identities of tensors.

Contribution

It extends the boson-fermion interference complementarity to partially distinguishable particles and reveals its implications for quantum metrology and tensor mathematics.

Findings

Complementarity holds with partial distinguishability.

Correlation matrices obey a sum rule linking bosons, fermions, and classical particles.

Trade-off between indistinguishability and quantum Fisher information.

Abstract

It is well known that bosons and fermions exhibit opposite behaviors when experiencing interference, in the sense that bosons have a tendency to bunch whereas fermions have a tendency to antibunch. Recently, this complementarity was mathematically characterized in [arXiv:2312.17709] by means of an identity relating the transition probabilities of both types of particles in a linear interferometer. Here, we show that such a complementarity still holds even when particles become partially distinguishable, for example, when they have slightly different polarizations or time delays. Namely, we establish a relation that combines bosonic and fermionic multiparticle interferences in an arbitrary linear interferometer, in the presence of partial distinguishability. Incidentally, this also provides a new mathematical identity relating the permanent and determinant of tensors of order 3. Importantly, this complementarity has direct operational consequences in quantum metrology. Indeed, we show that the correlation matrices for bosonic and fermionic particle number distributions at the output of the interferometer obey a simple sum rule: their sum equals twice the correlation matrix for classical particles. This, in turn, constraints the achievable quantum Fisher information in phase-estimation protocols, highlighting a trade-off whereby greater indistinguishability enhances bosonic sensitivity whereas reduced indistinguishability can benefit fermionic schemes.