Quantum Fisher information with coherence

In recent proposals for achieving optical super-resolution, variants of the quantum Fisher information (QFI) quantify the attainable precision. We find that claims about a strong enhancement of the resolution resulting from coherence effects are questionable because they refer to very small subsets of the data without proper normalization. When the QFI is normalized, accounting for the strength of the signal, there is no advantage of coherent sources over incoherent ones. Our findings have a bearing on further studies of the achievable precision of optical instruments. (c) 2019 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement