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Quantum Est 2flav
Quantum Est 2flav
Quantum Est 2flav
In this work, we analyze two-°avor neutrino oscillations within the framework of quantum es-
timation theory (QET). We compute the quantum Fischer information (QFI) for the mixing angle
and show that mass measurements are the ones that achieve optimal precision. We also study
the Fischer information (FI) associated with °avor measurements and show that they are opti-
mized at speci¯c neutrino times-of-°ight. Therefore, although the usual population measurement
does not realize the precision limit set by the QFI, it can in principle be implemented with the best
possible sensitivity to . We investigate how these quanti¯ers relate to the single-particle, mode
entanglement in neutrino oscillations. We demonstrate that this form of entanglement does not
enhance either of them. In particular, our results show that in single-particle settings, entan-
glement is not directly connected with the enhancement of precision in metrological tasks.
||
Corresponding author.
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E. C. Nogueira et al.
1. Introduction
Neutrinos have been a unique source of fundamental discoveries in Physics since
their introduction by Pauli and the development of the Fermi theory of beta decay.1,2
In the Standard Model of elementary particles, they are massless,3 but the phe-
nomena of neutrino oscillations — proposed for the ¯rst time in 1957 by B. Ponte-
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corvo4 and con¯rmed some decades later by the series of experiments that culminated
in Ref. 5 — show that they must have mass.
The theory of neutrino mixing was developed in analogy with that of quark
mixing. After the initial e®orts of Pontecorvo,4 Maki, Nakagawa and Sakata gave
relevant contributions6,7 and the theory was completed in the 70s by Bilenky and
others.1,8 The point is that the mismatch between °avor and mass eigenstates is
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Quantum estimation in neutrino oscillations
parameter scales as varðÞ N12 , N being the number of trials. This is better than the
usual shot-noise scaling varðÞ N1 : it gives smaller measurement uncertainty for
fewer trials. This type of result would be very interesting in contexts such as the
present one of neutrino oscillations, where the trial events, i.e. neutrino detections,
are di±cult.
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More importantly, these papers show that the use of entangled probe states
implies on the enhancement of the maximum precision limit achievable, optimizing
the value of the QFI. Thus, entanglement can be explored as a resource leading to
higher performance in parameter estimation tasks. However, these results were
obtained in the context of multiparticle (usually two-particle) probe systems. This
makes it hard to apply them to neutrino studies: since neutrinos hardly interact with
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each other in oscillations experiments, usable entangled neutrino pairs would be very
hard to obtain in this context.
In the present work, we investigate the role of the single-particle, mode entan-
glement in neutrino oscillations of Blasone et al.15 in the estimation of the two-°avor
mixing angle. Due to the \hardly interacting" character of neutrinos mentioned
above, this is the natural form of entanglement to consider for them (also referred to
in the literature as occupation number entanglement16). To begin with, we consider
the two-°avor neutrino oscillations within the framework of QET and analyze
the estimation of the mixing angle which characterizes them. We will take
neutrinos produced in a de¯nite °avor and two types of model for the ensuing
neutrino oscillations:
In both cases, we will calculate the QFI and the population measurement Fischer
Information (PMFI), i.e. the Fischer information (FI) for °avor detection, which
quanti¯es the sensibility of this commonly used protocol for the estimation of and
the maximum precision achievable with it. We will see that for model (2), direct
measurement of projectors onto eigenstates of the SLD corresponds to direct neutrino
mass measurement. Moreover, we will show that for both models, the PMFI is op-
timized and equals the QFI at speci¯c neutrino times-of-°ight. Therefore, although
the usual °avor measurement is not the one which achieves the optimal precision as
set by the QFI, it can in principle be implemented with the best possible sensitivity to
the desired parameter .
Next, we use the results obtained to address how the single-particle, mode en-
tanglement relates to the QFI and the FI for direct °avor detection. We show that
this entanglement does not enhance either of these quanti¯ers. In particular, our
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E. C. Nogueira et al.
that in this case, there is no clear physical interpretation for the projectors onto
eigenspaces of the SLD in terms of the typical direct measurements performed over
neutrinos in oscillation experiments. In Sec. 4, we show that this is no longer the case
when one takes into account the dynamical suppression of quantum coherence terms
between the di®erent mass eigenstates that compose the initial state. This is the main
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section of the present work since this e®ect always occurs to some extent in oscillation
experiments. We model it by introducing in the plane-wave model a Markovian
decoherence term. It will be given by a Lindblad operator that projects into one of the
mass eigenstates, thus damping the coherences between them. Solving the associated
Lindblad master equation, we show that the QFI is the same found for model (1), but
that now the projectors onto the invariant subspaces of the SLD that allow for
optimal precision correspond to direct neutrino mass measurement. The quantitative
relationship between entanglement and the Fischer Information will be analyzed for
each type of model in the section dedicated to it. We also calculate the PMFI in each
case and characterize its optimization. Finally, Section 5 summarizes the results and
closes with a few concluding remarks.
^ 1
VarðÞ ; ð1Þ
MF ðÞ
where M denotes the number of measurements and F ðÞ is the FI:
X 1 @pðxjÞ 2
F ðÞ : ð2Þ
x
pðxjÞ @
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The sum runs over all possible measurement outcomes and pðxjÞ is the condi-
tional probability of obtaining the outcome x given that the value of the parameter
we want to estimate is .
In quantum mechanics, every information property of a given measurement can be
completely described by a set fx; x g of measurement outcomes x and non-negative
operators x , such that the probability to get the value x is Tr½x . Here, denotes
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the density matrix of the system of interest.19 Such sets are called POVMs. When
the parameter has the value , the system is described by a density matrix and
we have
pðxjÞ ¼ Tr½ x : ð3Þ
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¼ Tr½ L 2 : ð6Þ
Hence, we conclude that the FI is bounded by the so-called QFI HðÞ, de¯ned by
The QFI determines the highest possible precision in the unbiased estimation of a
parameter allowed by quantum mechanics. To reach that precision, one needs to
saturate inequality (6). It can be shown that this happens for the POVM consisting of
the projectors onto the invariant subspaces of L .18 Moreover, one can show that the
SLD and the QFI can be written explicitly as
Xh m jð@ Þj n i
L ¼ 2 j m ih n j; ð8Þ
n;m
m þ n
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and
X jh n jð@ Þj m ij
2
HðÞ ¼ 2 ; ð9Þ
n;m
n þ m
P
where the sum extends over all terms with n þ m 6¼ 0 and ¼ n n j n ih n j
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(see, e.g. Ref. 12). This solves the problem from a mathematical viewpoint, although
direct measurement of these projectors may be technologically unfeasible.
because they are massive and the mass eigenstates do not coincide with the °avor
eigenstates, the latter being a superposition of the former. Recall that in the standard
plane-wave model with only two neutrino °avors (e.g. e and ), which is a relevant
approximation for several practical neutrino oscillation scenarios,21,22 this mixing is
described by a single parameter (mixing angle) through the relations1,10
!
j ei cosðÞ sinðÞ j 1i
¼ ; ð10Þ
sinðÞ cosðÞ j 2i
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Quantum estimation in neutrino oscillations
particle entanglement is well studied in the QIT literature,16 and several recent works
investigate its properties in the context of neutrino oscillations (e.g. Refs. 17, 23–27).
This is the approach we will use in the sequence for entanglement in neutrino
oscillations.
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HðÞ ¼ 4: ð13Þ
In this case, the operator L has the eigenvalues 2 with corresponding
eigenvectors
!
1 ð1
sinð2ÞÞ 1=2
j 2i ¼ pffiffiffi : ð14Þ
2 e i ð1 sinð2ÞÞ 1=2
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For the sake of comparison, let us compute then the FI associated with °avor
measurements, which is what one actually detects in neutrino oscillation experi-
ments. Despite the fact that Eq. (3) is always correct, we stress that the proper way
to compute the FI is by Eq. (5) (using the result for the SLD) and not by Eq. (2). This
is because in this case, the POVM, and consequently the measurement outcomes,
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depend directly on the parameter we want to estimate, and in Eq. (2), the derivative
must be taken at ¯xed values of the measurement outcomes. On the other hand, this
is exactly what is done in Eq. (5). That being said, the POVM is
80 1 0 19
> 1 1 >
< cos 2 ðÞ sinð2Þ sin 2 ðÞ sinð2Þ =
B 2 C B 2 C
@1 A; @ 1 A ; ð16Þ
>
: >
;
sinð2Þ sin 2 ðÞ sinð2Þ cos 2 ðÞ
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2 2
Fig. 1. (Color online) Comparison between the FI associated with °avor measurements for the experi-
mental value of the mixing angle 12 (see Ref. 9) (dashed), for ¼
8 (dotted) and the QFI (solid).
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Quantum estimation in neutrino oscillations
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Fig. 2. (Color online) Contrast between the °avor FI (dashed) and the scaled von Neumann entropy
(solid), with the mixing angle set at the experimental value.9
either the von Neumann entropy of one of the reduced system states, or else by any
of its monotones.31,32 In the present work, we will simply rescale the von Neumann
entropy so that it has the same maximum value as the QFI. As we can see in Fig. 2,
entanglement also does not contribute here to enhance the precision of °avor
measurements, since the local minima of entanglement match the local maxima of
the FI.
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d 1
ðtÞ ¼ i½H; ðtÞ þ AðtÞA † fðtÞ; A † Ag: ð19Þ
dt 2
The solution is
0 1
1
sinð2Þe ði 2 Þt C
B cos 2 ðÞ
ðtÞ ¼ @ 1 2 A: ð20Þ
sinð2Þe ði þ 2 Þt
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sin 2 ðÞ
2
This time, observe that the eigenvalues of are
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
1 cos 2 ð2Þ þ e t sin 2 ð2Þ
¼ ; ð21Þ
2
the corresponding eigenvectors being
0 1
1 @ A;
j i ¼ pffiffiffi ½ð1 þ 2 Þ 1=2
1 1=2 ð22Þ
2ð1 þ 2 Þ 1=4 e i t ½ð1 þ 2 Þ 1=2
1 1=2
with tanð2Þe 2 t .
The matrix elements of @ with respect to this basis are
8
>
> sinð2Þð1 e t Þ
>
> h jð@ Þj i ¼
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
< 1 þ tan 2 ð2Þe t
ð23Þ
>
> cosecð2Þj tanð2Þe 2 t j
>
>h jð@ Þ j i ¼ p ffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
ffi :
: þ
1 þ tan 2 ð2Þe t
The subscript is to remind us that in this case, we are dealing with a decoherence
term in the dynamics. We see that despite that, the QFI remains the same as the one
found for the plane-wave model in Sec. 3.
Although the QFI is not a®ected by the decoherence term, the situation becomes
very di®erent when one considers the SLD. In the present case, using Eqs. (21)–(23)
in Eq. (8), we ¯nd
tanðÞ 0
L ¼ 2 : ð25Þ
0 cotðÞ
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This result shows that here, the optimal measurement given by the SLD for the
estimation of the mixing angle corresponds to direct mass measurement.
The result for the SLD in Eq. (25) is surprising in the sense that it does not depend
on t > 0. However, it is easy to check its validity. In fact, direct substitution shows
that the right-hand side of Eq. (25) validates the SLD de¯ning Eq. (4). Moreover, this
equation has a unique solution when is positive (see, e.g. Ref. 37), which is the case
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We note that in the ! 0 limit of the above expression, one obtains again relation
(17). Another interesting feature is that the FI tends to a residual FI
4cos 2 ð2Þ
Fres ¼ : ð27Þ
1 þ cos 2 ð2Þ
This is the FI after decoherence has taken place, which is well below the upper limit
given by the QFI at the experimental value of the mixing angle. In Fig. 3, we contrast
the behaviors of the FI for di®erent . For values of this parameter within the
physically relevant range , we see that the FI for population measurement is still
optimized periodically. This time, however, it never reaches the maximum value
established by the QFI. The local maxima of the QFI reduce at each period.
Finally, let us analyze entanglement in this model. This time, we can no longer
rely on the von Neumann entropy as in Sec. 3, since the system will be in a mixed
state for every t > 0. However, given that the system is formally equivalent to a pair
Fig. 3. (Color online) Plots of the QFI (solid) and the FI associated with the °avor measurement
at the experimental value9 of the mixing angle. Decoherence parameter taken as 0 (dashed), 10 (dotted),
(dot-dashed) and 10 (double-dot-dashed).
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E. C. Nogueira et al.
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Fig. 4. (Color online) Comparison between the °avor FI (dashed) and the logarithmic negativity (solid)
for di®erent values of : ¼ =10 (top) and ¼ (bottom).
of qubits, we can use the logarithmic negativity 31,38 as a proper quanti¯er of entan-
glement. Considering the QFI, since it is again constant, we conclude it is also not
enhanced here by mode entanglement. In Fig. 4, we do the same comparison between
entanglement and the FI as we did in the previous section for di®erent values of the
decoherence parameter . Again, the local maxima of the FI match the local minima
of the entanglement, showing that it also does not contribute to the sensibility of the
population measurement protocol.
5. Conclusions
We investigated estimation of the mixing parameter characterizing two-°avor
neutrino oscillations from a QET perspective. For neutrinos initially in a de¯nite
°avor state, we considered two types of models to describe the ensuing °avor oscil-
lations: (1) the standard plane-wave approach; (2) a model which takes into account
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Quantum estimation in neutrino oscillations
the damping of quantum coherences between the di®erent mass states that compose
the °avor state. Since this type of \decoherence e®ect" always occurs to some extent
in experiments, the results obtained in the second case are the ones to relate to the
physical applications. In this case, we demonstrated (Sec. 4) that the measurement
scheme which realizes the optimal precision limit established by the QFI for unbiased
estimation of can be determined to be the direct mass measurement.
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Acknowledgments
E. N. would like to acknowledge the ¯nancial support from the Brazilian institution
CAPES (High-Level Sta® Improvement Coordination). G.S. and M.S. would like to
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