Quantum News
Sign In
Back to News
quantum-computing

Feedback-Induced Advantage in Quantum Clockworks

arXiv Quantum Physics
Loading...
3 min read
0 likes
⚡ Quantum Brief
Researchers Jakob Miller and Paul Erker introduced a unified framework for feedback-controlled quantum clocks, bridging classical atomic frequency standards with quantum ticking-clock models. Their work addresses a longstanding gap in integrating feedback mechanisms into autonomous quantum timekeeping systems. The study defines a feedback loop where classical information from a clock’s tick sequence dynamically adjusts its operation, maintaining core properties like self-timing and independence. This preserves the clock’s autonomy while enhancing precision through adaptive control. Signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) emerges as the key performance metric for evaluating feedback-enhanced clocks. The authors prove classical clocks gain no advantage from feedback, as their optimal S/N remains unchanged compared to non-feedback designs. Numerical evidence reveals quantum clocks uniquely benefit from feedback, achieving higher S/N ratios than previously possible. This suggests feedback could push quantum timekeeping beyond classical limits, unlocking new precision benchmarks. The findings position feedback as a critical tool for advancing quantum clock performance, potentially redefining fundamental timekeeping limits in quantum systems. The work was published on arXiv in March 2026.
Feedback-Induced Advantage in Quantum Clockworks

Summarize this article with:

ChatGPTChatGPTPerplexityPerplexityClaudeClaudeGrokGrok

Quantum Physics arXiv:2603.04556 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 4 Mar 2026] Title:Feedback-Induced Advantage in Quantum Clockworks Authors:Jakob Miller, Paul Erker View a PDF of the paper titled Feedback-Induced Advantage in Quantum Clockworks, by Jakob Miller and 1 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Atomic frequency standards have achieved steadily increasing precision over the past seventy years, enabled in part by feedback mechanisms that stabilise their output. In parallel, the timekeeping capabilities of quantum systems have been explored within the recently developed ticking-clock framework, which models clocks as dynamical systems producing a stochastic sequence of ticks. However, a theoretical description that unifies these perspectives and incorporates feedback into autonomous quantum clocks has been lacking. We introduce a framework for feedback-controlled clockworks in which classical information extracted from the tick sequence is used to influence the subsequent dynamics of the clock. We show that such feedback preserves the core structural features of self-timing and clockwork independence that characterise autonomous ticking clocks. We further identify the signal-to-noise ratio $\mathfrak{S}$ as the fundamental figure of merit for assessing the performance of feedback-controlled clocks. Applying our framework to two representative architectures, we prove that classical clockworks cannot surpass the optimal signal-to-noise ratio achievable without feedback. In contrast, for quantum clockworks we present numerical evidence that feedback can provide a genuine performance enhancement, improving the maximal attainable signal-to-noise ratio. These results establish feedback as a potentially essential ingredient in pushing the fundamental limits of timekeeping in the quantum regime. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2603.04556 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2603.04556v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.04556 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Jakob Miller [view email] [v1] Wed, 4 Mar 2026 19:39:37 UTC (635 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Feedback-Induced Advantage in Quantum Clockworks, by Jakob Miller and 1 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-03 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)

Read Original

Tags

quantum-geopolitics
partnership

Source Information

Source: arXiv Quantum Physics