Continuous-variable quantum sensing of a dissipative reservoir

Abstract

We propose a continuous-variable quantum sensing scheme, in which a harmonic oscillator is employed as the probe to estimate the parameters in the spectral density of a quantum reservoir, within a non-Markovian dynamical framework. It is revealed that the sensing sensitivity can be effectively boosted by (i) optimizing the weight of the momentum-position-type coupling in the whole probe-reservoir interaction Hamiltonian, (ii) the initial quantum squeezing resource provided by the probe, (iii) the noncanonical equilibration induced by the non-Markovian effect, and (iv) applying an external driving field. Our results may have some potential applications in understanding and controlling the decoherence of dissipative continuous-variable systems.