Pure State Inspired Lossless Post-selected Quantum Metrology of Mixed States

Abstract: Given an ensemble of identical pure quantum states that depend on an unknown parameter, recently it was shown that the quantum Fisher information can be losslessly compressed into a subensemble with a much smaller number of samples. However, generalization to mixed states leads to a technical challenge that is formidable to overcome directly. In this work, we avoid such technicality by unveiling the physics of a featured lossless post-selection measurement: while the post-selected quantum state is unchanged, the parametric derivative of the density operator is amplified by a large factor equal to the square root of the inverse of the post-selection success probability. This observation not only clarifies the intuition and essence of post-selected quantum metrology but also allows us to develop a mathematically compact theory for the lossless post-selection of mixed states. We find that if the parametric derivative of the density operator of a mixed state, or alternatively the symmetric logarithmic derivative, vanishes on the support of the density matrix, lossless post-selection can be achieved with an arbitrarily large amplification factor. We exemplify with the examples of superresolution imaging and unitary encoding of mixed initial states. Our results are useful for realistic post-selected quantum metrology in the presence of decoherence and of foundational interests to several problems in quantum information theory.