2010/06/08 by Thomas M. Stace · 128 citations
Decision Sciences · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Algorithm #Artificial intelligence #Atmospheric Ozone and Climate #Calibration and Measurement Techniques #Computational physics #Computer science #Heisenberg limit #Limit (mathematics) #Mathematical analysis #Mathematics #Noise (video) #Optics #Phase (matter) #Physics #Quantum #Quantum computer #Quantum limit #Quantum mechanics #Quantum metrology #Quantum noise #Quantum simulator #Scaling #Scientific Measurement and Uncertainty Evaluation #Shot noise #Statistical physics #Thermometer #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.82.011611
published in Physical Review A 82(1) (American Physical Society) · 4 pages
arxiv created 2010/06/08 · openalex publication_date 2010/07/30 · arxiv updated 2015/05/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The precision of typical thermometers consisting of N particles scales as ~1/√(N). For high-precision thermometry and thermometric standards, this presents an important theoretical noise floor. Here it is demonstrated that thermometry may be mapped onto the problem of phase estimation, and using techniques from optimal phase estimation, it follows that the scaling of the precision of a thermometer may in principle be improved to ~1/N, representing a Heisenberg limit to thermometry.