The ultimate precision limits for noisy frequency estimation

Abstract: Quantum metrology protocols allow to surpass precision limits typical to classical statistics. However, in recent years, no-go theorems have been formulated, which state that typical forms of uncorrelated noise can constrain the quantum enhancement to a constant factor, and thus bound the error to the standard asymptotic scaling. In particular, that is the case of time-homogeneous (Lindbladian) dephasing and, more generally, all semigroup dynamics that include phase covariant terms, which commute with the system Hamiltonian. We show that the standard scaling can be surpassed when the dynamics is no longer ruled by a semigroup and becomes time-inhomogeneous. In this case, the ultimate precision is determined by the system short-time behaviour, which when exhibiting the natural Zeno regime leads to a non-standard asymptotic resolution. In particular, we demonstrate that the relevant noise feature dictating the precision is the violation of the semigroup property at short timescales, while non-Markovianity does not play any specific role.