Preprint · July 2026

Quantum Fisher information and imperfect detection in a monitored fermion chain

Giovanni Di Fresco, Davide Valenti and Angelo Carollo

Preprint, arXiv:2607.24438 (2026)

Abstract

We study the metrological properties of a continuously monitored Kitaev chain in the presence of imperfect detection. The system is conditioned on a no-click record, while each emitted fermion is registered only with probability $0łeq qłeq 1$. Because the conditional dynamics remains Gaussian, the steady state is fully characterized by the fermionic correlation matrix. This allows a direct evaluation of the quantum Fisher information and of the mean Uhlmann curvature. For perfect detection, the monitored steady state retains a singular critical structure and the quantum Fisher information with respect to the chemical potential becomes super-extensive. For any $q<1$, imperfect detection introduces a finite smoothing length that rounds the singularity and restores extensive scaling. The detector efficiency behaves instead as a compatible mixed-state estimation parameter, as signaled by the vanishing mean Uhlmann curvature. These results show that incomplete trajectory information destroys the metrological enhancement associated with monitored criticality through a mechanism that differs from ordinary thermal smearing.

Cite

@misc{difresco2026quantumfisherinformationimperfect,
 archiveprefix = {arXiv},
 author = {Giovanni Di Fresco and Davide Valenti and Angelo Carollo},
 eprint = {2607.24438},
 month = {Jul},
 primaryclass = {quant-ph},
 title = {Quantum Fisher information and imperfect detection in a monitored fermion chain},
 url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.24438},
 year = {2026}
}