2023/11/09 by Nicholas Anto-Sztrikacs, Harry J. D. Miller, Anto-Sztrikacs, Nicholas +5 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Chemical Physics Studies #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2311.05496
openalex publication_date 2023/11/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We introduce prethermal temperature probes for sensitive, fast and robust temperature estimation. While equilibrium thermal probes with a manifold of quasidegenerate excited states have been previously recognized for their maximal sensitivity, they suffer from long thermalization timescales. When considering time as a critical resource in thermometry, it becomes evident that these equilibrium probes fall short of ideal performance. Here, we propose a different paradigm for thermometry, where setups originally suggested for optimal equilibrium thermometry should instead be employed as prethermal probes, by making use of their long-lived quasiequilibrium state. This transient state emerges from the buildup of quantum coherences among quasidegenerate levels. For a class of physically-motivated initial conditions, we find that energy measurements of the prethermal state exhibit a similar sensitivity as the equilibrium state. However, they offer the distinct benefit of orders of magnitude reduction in the time required for the estimation protocol. Upon introducing a figure-of-merit that accounts for the estimation protocol time, prethermal probes surpass the corresponding equilibrium probes in terms of effective thermal sensitivity, opening avenues for rapid thermometry by harnessing the long-lived prethermal states.