Quantum metrology for the Ising Hamiltonian with transverse magnetic field

We consider quantum metrology for unitary evolutions generated by parameter-dependent Hamiltonians. We focus on the unitary evolutions generated by the Ising Hamiltonian that describes the dynamics of a one-dimensional chain of spins with nearest-neighbour interactions and in the presence of a global, transverse, magnetic field. We analytically solve the problem and show that the precision with which one can estimate the magnetic field (interaction strength) given one knows the interaction strength (magnetic field) scales at the Heisenberg limit, and can be achieved by a linear superposition of the vacuum and N free fermion states. In addition, we show that Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger-type states exhibit Heisenberg scaling in precision throughout the entire regime of parameters. Moreover, we numerically observe that the optimal precision using a product input state scales at the standard quantum limit. (paper)