English

Shake before use: universal enhancement of quantum thermometry by unitary driving

Quantum Physics 2026-04-28 v3

Abstract

Quantum thermometry aims at determining temperature with ultimate precision in the quantum regime. Standard equilibrium approaches, limited by the Quantum Fisher Information given by static energy fluctuations, lose sensitivity outside a fixed temperature window. Non-equilibrium strategies have therefore been recently proposed to overcome these limits, but their advantages are typically model-dependent or tailored for a specific purpose. This Letter establishes a general, model-independent result showing that any temperature-dependent unitary driving applied to a thermalized probe enhances its quantum Fisher information with respect to its equilibrium value. Such information gain is expressed analytically through a positive semi-definite kernel of information currents that quantify the flow of statistical distinguishability. Our results, together with an analysis of the relation between information gain and control cost, are benchmarked on a driven spin-1/21/2 thermometer, furthermore showing that resonant modulations remarkably restore the quadratic-in-time scaling of the Fisher information and allow to shift the sensitivity peak across arbitrary temperature ranges.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.19631,
  title  = {Shake before use: universal enhancement of quantum thermometry by unitary driving},
  author = {Emanuele Tumbiolo and Lorenzo Maccone and Chiara Macchiavello and Matteo G. A. Paris and Giacomo Guarnieri},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.19631},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

20 pages, 5 figures. v3: Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters. Main-text edits include a new discussion of control cost. The Supplemental Material has been revised and expanded with new sections on the motivation for temperature-dependent driving, the relation between the dynamical increment and coherence generation, and a detailed discussion of control cost