Collisional thermometry for Gaussian systems

Abstract

We investigate a quantum thermometry scheme-based collision model with Gaussian systems. A key open question of these schemes concerns the scaling of the quantum Fisher information (QFI) with the number of ancillas. In qubit-based implementations this question is difficult to assess, due to the exponentially growing size of the Hilbert space. Here we focus on Gaussian collision models, which allow for the scaling of the QFI to be evaluated for arbitrarily large sizes. This numerical flexibility enables us to explore the thermometric properties of the model for a wide range of configurations. Despite the infinite Markov order of the stochastic process of the model, we provide a simple phenomenological analysis for the behavior of the QFI, estimating the asymptotic Fisher information density and how the transient effects of correlations for an increasing number of ancillas depend on the physical parameters of the model.