The Transient Counting Statistics of Autonomous Quantum Clocks

Quantum Physics arXiv:2609.16121 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 14 Sep 2026] Title:The Transient Counting Statistics of Autonomous Quantum Clocks Authors:Oscar Arandes, Sreenath K. Manikandan View a PDF of the paper titled The Transient Counting Statistics of Autonomous Quantum Clocks, by Oscar Arandes and Sreenath K. Manikandan View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:At the heart of every atomic clock is a quantum coherent emitter, the laser, that could in principle be treated autonomously. While their frequency or phase stability is typically studied in the semiclassical regime of a large number of emitted quanta, recent works on autonomous quantum clocks suggest that the few-quanta regime can offer statistical information in the temporal domain. This provides complementary means to probe the fundamental limits to precise timekeeping in the quantum regime. Motivated by these works, we consider simple models for two- and three-level quantum emitters subject to an athermal fueling through dephasing, which generically results in coherences in the steady state. A large deviation principle with finite-time contributions is used to identify the transient counting statistics and their dependence on the initial conditions. We conclude by discussing the implications for precise timekeeping and quantum sensing using autonomous quantum emitters as clocks in their transient regime. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2609.16121 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2609.16121v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.16121 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Oscar Arandes [view email] [v1] Mon, 14 Sep 2026 18:00:01 UTC (366 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled The Transient Counting Statistics of Autonomous Quantum Clocks, by Oscar Arandes and Sreenath K. ManikandanView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-09 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?) 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?)