Quantum Metrology via Adiabatic Control of Topological Edge States

Abstract

Criticality-based quantum sensing exploits hypersensitive response to system parameters near phase transition points. This work uncovers two metrological advantages offered by topological phase transitions when the probe is prepared as topological edge states. Firstly, the order of topological band touching is found to determine how the metrology sensitivity scales with the system size. Engineering a topological phase transition with higher-order band touching is hence advocated, with the associated quantum Fisher information scaling as $ \mathcal{F}_Q \sim L^{2p}$, with $L$ the lattice size in one dimension, and $p$ the order of band touching. Secondly, with a topological lattice accommodating degenerate edge modes (such as multiple zero modes), preparing an $N$-particle entangled state at the edge and then adiabatically tuning the system to the phase transition point grows quantum entanglement to macroscopic sizes, yielding $\mathcal{F}_Q \sim N^2 L^{2p}$. This work hence paves a possible topological phase transition-based route to harness entanglement, large lattice size, and high-order band touching for quantum metrology.