Insensitivity points and performance of open quantum interferometers under number-conserving & non-conserving Lindblad dynamics
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Abstract
We investigate the phase sensitivity of a linear two-mode atom interferometer subject to environmental noise, modeled within the framework of open quantum systems with both number-conserving and non-conserving Lindblad operators. Considering several input states, we first study the cases N=1,2 (N number of particles) and perform numerical simulations for N>2. The sensitivity as a function of the holding time can display divergence points where phase estimation becomes impossible, to which we refer as insensitivity points. We characterize their behavior as the input state, particle number, and noise operator are varied, and we find that their positions are independent of the noise intensity. Moreover, while our fixed measurement scheme may favor number-conserving noise at small N (i.e., having better sensitivity), the Cramér-Rao bound reveals that particle non-conserving noise yields strictly lower achievable sensitivity for all particle numbers.