Quantum Chinese Remainder Clock

Abstract

The Chinese remainder theorem is used in metrology for extending the range of quantum clocks/radar/interferometry, where the phase of a signal is known relative to a set of oscillators with different periods. This paper investigates the performance of a quantum-mechanical Chinese remainder clock, consisting of atoms/oscillators with pairwise coprime periods. We provide the optimal initial state and the optimal Heisenberg-limited quantum measurements for measuring time up to the product of the periods. We introduce a novel fault-tolerant post-processing protocol that allows reconstruction of the correct time even in the presence of errors in the remainders.