Quantum sensing of aging transitions

Abstract

The aging transition is a critical phenomenon in which collective dynamics deteriorate as the fraction of inactive quantum nodes exceeds a threshold, referred to as the aging transition point. Such transitions are relevant to a broad range of biological and physiological systems, and may play an important role in quantum information processing, particularly in the stability assessment and robustness control of quantum networks. Detecting the aging transition point is therefore crucial for predicting network breakdown, since it marks the critical threshold at which a quantum network abruptly loses its stable active state and enters a degraded inactive phase. Here we propose a quantum sensing strategy to locate this transition point using a single qubit probe coherently coupled to a small subset of oscillator nodes. As the inactive fraction p approaches the aging transition point, the excited-state population of the probe becomes highly sensitive to variations in p, leading to a pronounced enhancement of the Fisher information. This critical enhancement enables high-precision estimation of the transition point. Remarkably, this enhancement survives even in the classical regime for the oscillators, where the Fisher information increases dramatically as p approaches the transition region. Our results establish a feasible route to sensing aging transitions in oscillator networks and provide a metrological perspective on critical phenomena in quantum many-body systems.