Multiparameter estimation with single photons

It was suggested in Ref. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 170802] that optical networks with relatively inexpensive overhead---single photon Fock states, passive optical elements, and single photon detection---can show significant improvements over classical strategies for single-parameter estimation, when the number of modes in the network is small (n < 7). A similar case was made in Ref. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 070403] for multi-parameter estimation, where measurement is instead made using photon-number resolving detectors. In this paper, we analytically compute the quantum Cramér-Rao bound to show these networks can have a constant-factor quantum advantage in multi-parameter estimation for even large number of modes. Additionally, we provide a simplified measurement scheme using only single-photon (on-off) detectors that is capable of approximately obtaining this sensitivity for a small number of modes.

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