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Ticking-clock performance enhanced by nonclassical temporal correlations

Costantino Budroni1,2,*,†, Giuseppe Vitagliano2,*,‡, and Mischa P. Woods3,*,§

  • 1Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, 1090 Vienna, Austria
  • 2Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Boltzmanngasse 3, 1090 Vienna, Austria
  • 3Institute for Theoretical Physics, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland

  • *All authors contributed equally.
  • †costantino.budroni@univie.ac.at
  • ‡giuseppe.vitagliano@oeaw.ac.at
  • §mischa@phys.ethz.ch
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Phys. Rev. Research 3, 033051 – Published 15 July, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.033051

Abstract

We investigate the role of nonclassical temporal correlations in enhancing the performance of ticking clocks in a discrete-time scenario. We show that the problem of optimal models for ticking clocks is related to the violation of Leggett-Garg-type temporal inequalities formulated in terms of, possibly invasive, sequential measurements, but on a system with a bounded memory capacity. Ticking clocks inspire the derivation of a family of temporal inequalities showing a gap between classical and quantum correlations, despite involving no input. We show that quantum ticking-clock models achieving accuracy beyond the classical bound are also those violating Leggett-Garg-type temporal inequalities for finite sequences and we investigate their continuous-time limit. Interestingly, we show that optimal classical clock models in the discrete-time scenario do not have a well-defined continuous-time limit, a feature that is absent in quantum models.

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Phys. Rev. Research 3, 033051– Published 15 July, 2021
  • Received 15 May 2020
  • Revised 26 November 2020
  • Accepted 25 June 2021
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