2016/12/02 by Li-Sha Guo, Bao-Ming Xu, Guo, Li-Sha +5
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Quantum optics and atomic interactions
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1612.00557
openalex publication_date 2016/12/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The radical pair (RP) mechanism, which describes the quantum dynamics of a spatially separated electron pair, is considered as one of the principal models of avian magnetoreception. Different from the conventional phenomenological approach where the sensitivity of avian magnetoreception is characterized by the singlet yield ΦS, we introduce the quantum Fisher information (QFI), which represents the maximum information about the magnetic field's direction extracted from the RP state, to give a precise measure of sensitivity of avian compass essentially. The consistency between our results and experimental observations suggests that QFI plays a decisive role in avian magnetoreception. Besides, within the framework of quantum metrology, we can judge the feasibility of any possible measurement scheme for avian magnetoreception, and shed light on an intrinsic relevance between the singlet yield and a concrete measurement scheme of our approach. The present work allows us to understand many things about avian magnetoreception from a fully new perspective of quantum metrology, and provide a new route to establish a direct connection between quantum information and many other biological functions.