Critical quantum thermometry and its feasibility in spin systems

Abstract

In this work, we study temperature sensing with finite-sized strongly correlated systems exhibiting quantum phase transitions. We use the quantum Fisher information (QFI) approach to quantify the sensitivity in the temperature estimation, and apply a finite-size scaling framework to link this sensitivity to critical exponents of the system around critical points. We numerically calculate the QFI around the critical points for two experimentally-realizable systems: the spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate and the spin-chain Heisenberg XX model in the presence of an external magnetic field. Our results confirm finite-size scaling properties of the QFI. Furthermore, we discuss experimentally-accessible observables that (nearly) saturate the QFI at the critical points for these two systems.