Quantum sensing with critical systems: impact of symmetry, imperfections, and decoherence

Yinan Chen; Sara Murciano; Pablo Sala; Jason Alicea

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arXiv · 2601.04364

Quantum sensing with critical systems: impact of symmetry, imperfections, and decoherence

Yinan Chen·Sara Murciano·Pablo Sala·Jason Alicea

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Abstract

Entangled many-body states enable high-precision quantum sensing beyond the standard quantum limit. We develop interferometric sensing protocols based on quantum critical wavefunctions and compare their performance with Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) and spin-squeezed states. Building on the idea of symmetries as a metrological resource, we introduce a symmetry-based algorithm to identify optimal measurement strategies. We illustrate this algorithm both for magnetic systems with internal symmetries and Rydberg-atom arrays with spatial symmetries. We study the robustness of criticality for quantum sensing under non-unitary deformations, symmetry-preserving and symmetry-breaking decoherence, and qubit loss -- identifying regimes where critical systems outperform GHZ states and showing that non-unitary deformation can even enhance sensing precision. Combined with recent results on log-depth preparation of critical wavefunctions, interferometric sensing in this setting appears increasingly promising.

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Yinan Chen, Sara Murciano, Pablo Sala, Jason Alicea. 2026-07-07. Quantum sensing with critical systems: impact of symmetry, imperfections, and decoherence. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.04364

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