No abstract

We study the quantum evolution under the combined action of the exponentials of two not necessarily commuting operators. We consider the limit in which the two evolutions alternate at infinite frequency. This case appears in a plethora of situations, both in physics (Feynman integral) and mathematics (product formulas). We focus on the case in which the two evolution times are scaled differently in the limit and generalize standard techniques and results. arXiv:1906.04498v1 [quant-ph]

We consider the estimation of an arbitrary parameter φ, such as the temperature or a magnetic field, affecting in a distributed manner the components of an arbitrary linear optical passive network, such as an integrated chip. We demonstrate that Heisenberg scaling precision (i.e. of the order of 1/N, where N is the number of probe photons) can be achieved without any iterative adaptation of the interferometer hardware and by using only a simple, single, squeezed light source and well-established homodyne measurements techniques. Furthermore, no constraint on the possible values of the parameter is needed but only a preliminary shot-noise estimation (i.e. with a precision of N ) easily achievable without any quantum resources. Indeed, such a classical knowledge of the parameter is enough to prepare a single, suitable optical stage either at the input or the output of the network to monitor with Heisenberg-limited precision any variation of the parameter to the order of 1 / N without the need to iteratively modify such a stage.