Instability-Enhanced Quantum Sensing with Tunable Multibody Interactions

Abstract

Dynamical instabilities can amplify small perturbations into measurable signals, offering a route to quantum-enhanced sensing. This mechanism was experimentally demonstrated in a collective-spin system with quadratic interactions, described by a twisting-and-turning Hamiltonian, where quantum evolution near an unstable point leads to exponential growth of spin fluctuations, enabling metrological gain beyond the standard quantum limit. Here, we show that a quartic extension of this Hamiltonian substantially increases the amplification. The additional nonlinear term reshapes the phase-space structure, generating new unstable points and accelerating signal amplification. As a result, enhanced sensitivity is achieved within experimentally accessible coherence times. Remarkably, even at fixed instability rate (equal Lyapunov exponent), multibody interactions outperform the quadratic case due to enhanced short-time dynamics. We analyze the classical and quantum behavior of the multibody model and discuss its experimental implementations. Our results identify phase-space curvature as a resource for optimizing the speed and performance of quantum sensors.