Optimized probing states for qubit phase estimation with general quantum noise

We exploit the theory of quantum estimation to investigate quantum state estimation in the presence of noise. The quantum Fisher information is used to assess the estimation performance. For the qubit in Bloch representation, general expressions are derived for the quantum score and then for the quantum Fisher information. From this latter expression, it is proved that the Fisher information always increases with the purity of the measured qubit state. An arbitrary quantum noise affecting the qubit is taken into account for its impact on the Fisher information. The task is then specified to estimating the phase of a qubit in a rotation around an arbitrary axis, equivalent to estimating the phase of an arbitrary single-qubit quantum gate. The analysis enables determination of the optimal probing states best resistant to the noise, and proves that they always are pure states but need to be specifically matched to the noise. This optimization is worked out for several noise models important to the qubit. An adaptive scheme and a Bayesian approach are presented to handle phase-dependent solutions.