Vortex NOON states for rotation sensing

Abstract

We introduce a scheme to generate NOON states of few-body bosonic vortices and demonstrate their application as high-precision rotation sensors. Our approach is based on cold atoms in a weakly anisotropic two-dimensional harmonic trap, where the single-particle p orbitals define an effective two-mode Bose-Hubbard model with vortex modes $(\mathrm{p}_x\pm\mathrm{i}\mathrm{p}_y)$ carrying opposite circulation. In the self-trapping regime, we show that the NOON manifold becomes spectrally isolated, and collective tunneling processes give rise to highly entangled vortex NOON states. However, these states emerge on prohibitively long timescales. To overcome this limitation, we develop two complementary acceleration strategies: geodesic counterdiabatic driving for small particle numbers, and resonance- and chaos-assisted tunneling in the semiclassical regime at larger particle numbers. Both approaches enable the generation of NOON states on experimentally relevant timescales while preserving near-unit fidelities. Finally, we quantify the metrological advantage of vortex NOON states by introducing an interferometric protocol that exploits their intrinsic sensitivity to rotation, enabling the detection of infinitesimal external rotations at the Heisenberg limit. Our work opens the door to rotation sensors based on atomic NOON states, generically realizable in bosonic Josephson junctions with vortex-type orbitals.