Open Access

Artur Niezgoda, Jan Chwedeńczuk, Tomasz Wasak, Francesco Piazza

• We consider a hybrid system of matter and light as a sensing device and quantify the role of cooperative effects. The latter generically enhance the precision with which modifications of the effective light-matter coupling constant can be measured. In particular, considering a fundamental model of N qubits coupled to a single electromagnetic mode, we demonstrate that the ultimate bound for the precision shows double-Heisenberg scaling: Δθ∝1/(Nn), with N and n the number of qubits and photons, respectively. Moreover, even using classical states and measuring only one subsystem, a Heisenberg-times-shot-noise scaling, i.e., 1/(N√n) or 1/(n√N), is reached. As an application, we show that a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a double-well optical lattice within an optical cavity can in principle be used to detect the gravitational acceleration g with the relative precision of Δg/g∼10−4Hz−1/2. The analytical approach presented in this study takes into account the leakage of photons throughWe consider a hybrid system of matter and light as a sensing device and quantify the role of cooperative effects. The latter generically enhance the precision with which modifications of the effective light-matter coupling constant can be measured. In particular, considering a fundamental model of N qubits coupled to a single electromagnetic mode, we demonstrate that the ultimate bound for the precision shows double-Heisenberg scaling: Δθ∝1/(Nn), with N and n the number of qubits and photons, respectively. Moreover, even using classical states and measuring only one subsystem, a Heisenberg-times-shot-noise scaling, i.e., 1/(N√n) or 1/(n√N), is reached. As an application, we show that a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a double-well optical lattice within an optical cavity can in principle be used to detect the gravitational acceleration g with the relative precision of Δg/g∼10−4Hz−1/2. The analytical approach presented in this study takes into account the leakage of photons through the cavity mirrors, and allows one to determine the sensitivity when g is inferred via measurements on atoms or photons.…