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Nonequilibrium quantum thermometry with noncommutative system-bath couplings

Youssef Aiache1,*, Abderrahim El Allati1, İlkay Demir2,3, and Khadija El Anouz1

  • *Contact author: youssefaiache0@gmail.com
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Phys. Rev. A 112, 062229 – Published 19 December, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/prs2-jcxj

Abstract

Accurate temperature estimation in the quantum and cryogenic regimes remains a fundamental challenge. Here, we investigate nonequilibrium quantum thermometry using a single-qubit probe coupled to a bosonic bath through noncommuting interaction operators, which unify pure dephasing and dissipative dynamics within a spin-boson model. We show that the interference between these two coupling channels induces strong non-Markovian feedback between populations and coherences, leading to coherence trapping and enhanced thermal sensitivity. Remarkably, by tuning the coupling structure, the probe's temperature sensitivity exhibits a quadratic low-temperature scaling, even under weak coupling. Moreover, while coherence-based measurements are formally suboptimal, they become the most informative in the early nonequilibrium regime, where memory effects dominate. Our findings identify noncommutative system-bath couplings as a practical and tunable resource for achieving high-precision quantum thermometry in realistic open-system architectures.

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Outline

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Phys. Rev. A 112, 062229– Published 19 December, 2025
  • Received 18 September 2025
  • Accepted 5 December 2025
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