Semiclassical Approach to Quantum Fisher Information

Abstract: Quantum sensors driven into the quantum chaotic regime can have dramatically enhanced sensitivity, which, however, depends intricately on the details of the underlying classical phase space. Here, we develop an accurate semiclassical approach that provides direct and efficient access to the phase-space-resolved quantum Fisher information (QFI), the central quantity that quantifies the ultimate achievable sensitivity. This approximation reveals, in very concrete terms, that the QFI is large whenever a specific dynamical quantity tied to the sensing parameter displays a large variance over the course of the corresponding classical time evolution. Applied to a paradigmatic system of quantum chaos, the kicked top, we show that the semiclassical description is accurate already for modest quantum numbers, i.e. deep in the quantum regime, and extends seamlessly to very high quantum numbers that are beyond the reach of other methods.