Quantum-enhanced measurements: beating the standard quantum limit

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

Quantum mechanics, through the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, imposes limits to the precision of measurement. Conventional measurement techniques typically fail to reach these limits. Conventional bounds to the precision of measurements such as the shot noise limit or the standard quantum limit are not as fundamental as the Heisenberg limits, and can be beaten using quantum strategies that employ `quantum tricks' such as squeezing and entanglement.

Related collections

Most cited references 5

Record: found
Abstract: found
Article: not found

Nanometre-scale displacement sensing using a single electron transistor.

Robert Knobel, Andrew N. Cleland (2003)

It has been a long-standing goal to detect the effects of quantum mechanics on a macroscopic mechanical oscillator. Position measurements of an oscillator are ultimately limited by quantum mechanics, where 'zero-point motion' fluctuations in the quantum ground state combine with the uncertainty relation to yield a lower limit on the measured average displacement. Development of a position transducer, integrated with a mechanical resonator, that can approach this limit could have important applications in the detection of very weak forces, for example in magnetic resonance force microscopy and a variety of other precision experiments. One implementation that might allow near quantum-limited sensitivity is to use a single electron transistor (SET) as a displacement sensor: the exquisite charge sensitivity of the SET at cryogenic temperatures is exploited to measure motion by capacitively coupling it to the mechanical resonator. Here we present the experimental realization of such a device, yielding an unequalled displacement sensitivity of 2 x 10(-15) m x Hz(-1/2) for a 116-MHz mechanical oscillator at a temperature of 30 mK-a sensitivity roughly a factor of 100 larger than the quantum limit for this oscillator.