Entanglement and sensitivity in precision measurements with states of a fluctuating number of particles

The concepts of separability, entanglement, spin squeezing, and the Heisenberg limit are central in the theory of quantum-enhanced metrology. In the current literature, these are well established only in the case of linear interferometers operating with input quantum states of a known fixed number of particles. This manuscript generalizes these concepts and extends the quantum phase estimation theory by taking into account classical and quantum fluctuations of the particle number. Our analysis concerns most of the current experiments on precision measurements where the number of particles is known only on average. © 2010 The American Physical Society.