Quantum Fisher information perspective on sensing in anti-PT symmetric systems

Abstract

The efficient sensing of weak environmental perturbations via special degeneracies called exceptional points in non-Hermitian systems has attracted enormous attention in the last few decades. However, in contrast to the extensive literature on parity-time (PT) symmetric systems, the exotic hallmarks of anti-PT symmetric systems are only beginning to be realized now. Very recently, a characteristic resonance of vanishing linewidth in anti-PT symmetric systems was shown to exhibit tremendous sensitivity to intrinsic nonlinearities. Given the primacy of sensing in non-Hermitian systems, in general, and the immense topicality of anti-PT symmetry, we investigate the statistical bound to the measurement sensitivity for any arbitrary perturbation in a dissipatively coupled, anti-PT symmetric system. Using the framework of quantum Fisher information and the long-time solution to the full master equation, we analytically compute the Cramér-Rao bound for the system properties such as the detunings and the couplings. As an illustrative example of this formulation, we inspect and reaffirm the role of a long-lived resonance in dissipatively interacting systems for sensing applications.