Limits on Parameter Estimation of Quantum Channels

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to develop a theoretical framework to study parameter estimation of quantum channels. We study the task of estimating unknown parameters encoded in a channel in the sequential setting. A sequential strategy is the most general way to use a channel multiple times. Our goal is to establish lower bounds (called Cramer-Rao bounds) on the estimation error. The bounds we develop are universally applicable; i.e., they apply to all permissible quantum dynamics. We consider the use of catalysts to enhance the power of a channel estimation strategy. This is termed amortization. The power of a channel for a parameter estimation is determined by its Fisher information. Thus, we study how much a catalyst quantum state can enhance the Fisher information of a channel by defining the amortized Fisher information. We establish our bounds by proving that for certain Fisher information quantities, catalyst states do not improve the performance of a sequential estimation protocol compared to a parallel one. The technical term for this is an amortization collapse. We use this to establish bounds when estimating one parameter, or multiple parameters simultaneously. Our bounds apply universally and we also cast them as optimization problems. For the single parameter case, we establish bounds for general quantum channels using both the symmetric logarithmic derivative (SLD) Fisher information and the right logarithmic derivative (RLD) Fisher information. The task of estimating multiple parameters simultaneously is more involved than the single parameter case, because the Cramer-Rao bounds take the form of matrix inequalities. We establish a scalar Cramer-Rao bound for multiparameter channel estimation using the RLD Fisher information. For both single and multiparameter estimation, we provide a no-go condition for the so-called Heisenberg scaling using our RLD-based bound.