Continuous Measurements for Advanced Quantum Metrology ^†

We review some recent results regarding the use of time-continuous measurements for quantum-enhanced metrology. First, we present the underlying quantum estimation framework and elucidate the correct figures of merit to employ. We then report results from two previous works where the system of interest is an ensemble of two-level atoms (qubits) and the quantity to estimate is a magnetic field along a known direction (a frequency). In the first case, we show that, by continuously monitoring the collective spin observable transversal to the encoding Hamiltonian, we get Heisenberg scaling for the achievable precision (i.e., $1/N$ for N atoms); this is obtained for an uncorrelated initial state. In the second case, we consider independent noises acting separately on each qubit and we show that the continuous monitoring of all the environmental modes responsible for the noise allows us to restore the Heisenberg scaling of the precision, given an initially entangled GHZ state.