Fault-Tolerant Heisenberg-Limited Quantum Sensing

Abstract

Quantum sensors hold great promise for achieving better sensitivity in the measurement of physical quantities compared to their classical counterparts. However, the conditions under which quantum advantage in sensing can be achieved are rather restrictive, and most quantum enhancements in sensing are lost in the presence of noise, errors, or a poorly calibrated system. To overcome these limitations, we are motivated to import ideas from fault-tolerant quantum computing to quantum sensing. Specifically, we consider a qubit noise model where the probability of phase-flip errors is exponentially smaller (in qubit number) compared to the probability of bit-flip errors that occur with probability $p$. For this noise structure, we demonstrate that, given a total sensing time $T$, Heisenberg scaling can be attained for times up to $T\propto 1/p^{(N+1)/2}$ for a $N$-qubit repetition code, in contrast with $T\propto 1/p$ without using a fault-tolerant sensing protocol.