Estimation of parameters in circuit QED by continuous quantum measurement

Abstract: Designing high-precision and efficient schemes is of crucial importance for quantum parameter estimation in practice. The estimation scheme based on continuous quantum measurement is one possible type of this, which looks also the most natural choice in case such as continuous dynamical process. In this work we specify the study to the stat-of-the-art superconducting circuit quantum-electrodynamics (QED) system, where the high-quality continuous measurement has been extensively exploited in the past decade. Within the framework of Bayesian estimation and particularly using the quantum Bayesian rule in circuit QED, we numerically simulate the likelihood function as estimator for the Rabi frequency of qubit oscillation. We find that, by proper design of the interaction strength of measurement, the estimate precision can scale with the measurement time beyond the standard quantum limit, which is usually assumed for this type of continuous measurement since no more special quantum resource is involved. We understand this remarkable result by quantum correlation in time between the output signals, and simulate the effect of quantum efficiency of the measurement on the precision scaling behavior.