Environmental parameter estimation with the two-level atom probes

Abstract

A novel scheme is proposed to estimate three environmental parameters, the detuning, the temperature and the squeezing strength with one-qubit or two-qubit probes. Quantum Fisher information and the fidelity of the atom probes are calculated. When the detuning between the frequency of cavity field and the atomic transition frequency is estimated, the dynamics of quantum Fisher information shows oscillatory and rising behaviors. To estimate the temperature of the thermal reservoir, the one-qubit probe with the superposition initial state is more favorable than the two-qubit probe with the entangled initial state. When the squeezing strength of the squeezed vacuum reservoir is estimated, we find that the estimation precision is significantly improved by utilizing the two-qubit probe with the maximal entangled initial state. Our work provides a potential application in the open quantum system and quantum information processing.